Growing up in the wonderful suburbs of Detroit (The sarcasm is in your head, I'm being sincere...not), I had a lot of bad experiences with school/yeshiva. The issues I had might have existed in other towns, but the lack of choice that goes along with living in a small town, was definitely detrimental. I'm not commenting on the current school system in Detroit, it's changed significantly in the years since I finished school.
I was a difficult student, to be sure (nothing's changed in that aspect), but I did have a handful of teachers who somehow got through all my defenses and actually helped me learn. The complaints I have are with the other teachers who didn't make much of an effort and more importantly with the school system which wrote kids like me off completely. It's true that I didn't pay attention in classes, follow instructions, do homework, or follow the rules. But, I did want to learn, I always wanted to know more about lots of things, although not necessarily what they wanted me to learn. Instead of making me feel stupid for not keeping up with my classmates, they could have taken advantage of my intellectual curiosity in other subjects. They had no flexibility and offered no choice in classes. For example, I learned absolutely nothing about Computers in Elementary school, yet in High School when I finally had a half decent Computer class the teachers let me skip the class because they had nothing to teach me that I hadn't already learned on my own.
That's all the complaining I'll do for now, the point is that because of the way I was treated in school and my immaturity all I wanted to do was get out of school and start working. Of course, this lead to huge gaps in my education, most of which I was able to fill in on my own. The area I missed out on the most was Limudei Kodesh, which is not easy to make up on your own. For a long time I've regretted not staying in Yeshiva longer and especially not learning in Israel for a couple years like most of my friends did. This all played a big part in our decision to spend this year in Israel and for me to go back to Yeshiva.
This isn't my first time attempting to go back to Yeshiva. In September 2011 I learned for one day in a Yeshiva in New York and planned to stay there for a while. The next day I flew to London to meet my wife's parents and between dating, traveling and getting married, I never made it back to Yeshiva. This time I'm more committed. I initially planned to go to Ohr Someach, a Yeshiva with many positive attributes, not the least of which is that they allow married men to learn there for free. I mentioned this to my cousin, who said "Don't go there, you should go to Shapell's". I never heard of the place before, but in the next week two other people also recommended it, so I did more research.
As luck would have it, the next week a Rav from the yeshiva was in Detroit and I went to meet him. Everything sounded good, so I signed up. Somehow I managed to delay filling out the application and didn't actually get accepted to the yeshiva until a week after we moved. Turns out the Rosh Yeshiva was in Skokie with my Father in-law many many years ago (I added the extra many, in case he's reading this :-)), who as the dorm counselor, would wake him up every morning. I'm not saying that's why I was accepted, but...
After much procrastination, I was finally supposed to join the Yeshiva early this week. Unfortunately, the namesake of the Yeshiva passed away and his levaya was this Tuesday, so my start time was pushed off until Wednesday. Because of the 7 hour time difference, I was busy with work on Wednesday morning and almost forgot that I was supposed to meet the RY at 9:30AM. I remembered just in time to run and catch the bus which took around 40 minutes to get me there (confession: I was lost walking for 10 minutes from the bus stop). I walked in the door around 2 minutes early, only to find that the RY and the guy in charge of tuition both had to leave for another levaya. Fortunately, I was able to meet with another Rav who talked to me about my previous learning and my goals for this year.
We decided that it would be best to start in a shiur that focuses on reteaching fundamentals of Gemara. Turns out there are two other guys here from Detroit, one of whom is a sincerely nice fellow (that looks as weird in type as it sounded in my head). There is also another guy who just joined the yeshiva (the zman started three weeks ago, so we're way behind) so we've been catching up together. The guys in the Yeshiva seem to be mostly good and they are all here because they legitimately want to learn (most of them are college graduates who took time off from starting their careers, so they're not just playing around). I'm kind of torn now, because going to the Shiurim, I realize there are a lot of fundamentals that I need to learn, but at the same time I'm finding it frustrating that some of the guys in the Shiur don't seem to understand what's going on, even at the somewhat excruciatingly slow pace we're learning.
Nehama pointed out that patience is not really my thing I should probably work on that, as it wouldn't be smart to move to a higher Shiur without picking up the fundamentals that I know I'm missing. I also enjoy the Shiur overall, because the Rav has a good sense of humor and that's always been the key to my learning. In any case, two days is not enough time to come to any conclusions, so I just have to wait and see how it goes.
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