The Classroom Was My First Dungeon

Explore how education systems use shame, control, silence, and performance metrics to enforce submission.

Symbolic thread: chalkboards = safewords denied.

Gold stars = performance praise.

This one haunts and heals.

Estimated Read Time: 6-8 minutes

Themes: early conditioning, compliance vs defiance, punishment-based systems, girlhood resistance, symbolic schooling trauma

The Classroom Was My First Dungeon

Before I ever knew the word “submission,” I was taught it.

Not by a lover.

Not in a playroom.

But in a fluorescent-lit classroom with lined desks, clocks that ticked like shackles, and rules that bent me into someone else’s image.

I was just a little girl — but I already knew what it meant to be monitored, corrected, isolated for speaking too loudly, and praised only when I conformed.

My earliest dominators wore name tags.

They held clipboards instead of crops.

They handed out grades instead of safe words — and the only contracts were silent, unspoken deals: Obey, or suffer.

And I did.

Suffer.

Not always in ways you could see.

But in all the ways that rewired a child’s natural wildness into containment.

I wasn’t a “good girl.”

They told me I was “too much.” Too loud. Too sensitive. Too expressive. Too me.

They said I asked too many questions.

I made others uncomfortable.

I “disrupted” the class when I stood up for others.

But I wasn’t trying to disrupt anything — I was trying to survive.

To exist. To speak. To feel.

This was the first dungeon. And I never signed up to be there.

But I was punished for trying to escape.

And just like in a real dungeon scene, there were protocols.

Raise your hand to speak.

Ask permission to pee.

Memorize, regurgitate, don’t challenge the script.

Don’t cry. Don’t shout. Don’t be different.

It was all about control. All about shaping pliable little bodies into obedient workers, wives, or shadows of themselves.

Sound familiar? It should.

Because for many girls, school isn’t about education.

It’s about early domestication.

I didn’t learn math as much as I learned how to suppress my rage.

I didn’t learn history — I learned how to disappear inside it.

I didn’t learn science — I learned how to study people’s faces to see if I was safe to speak.

I was being trained — not in facts, but in submission.

And the ones who survived best were often the ones who stayed silent.

But not me.

Even back then, I resisted.

I challenged the teacher. I got sent to the hallway.

I looked out the window and dreamed of escape.

I walked home in silence, staring at the ground, trying to understand why everything felt so different.

Now I know why.

The classroom wasn’t just a room. It was an institution. A system. A test. A trap.

And the same power dynamics that exist in dungeons — safe, consensual, negotiated spaces — were being simulated without my consent.

There was no safe word in school.

There was no aftercare.

Now, I get to rewrite the rules.

Now, I create the scene — one where every act is consensual, where power is negotiated, and where the classroom no longer defines me.

My dungeon now is sacred.

It’s built on trust.

On choice.

On truth.

And if you think a classroom could ever break me? You’ve clearly never seen what happens when a girl like me takes her power back.

Welcome to my real education.