Everett High School - Crimson Tide / Memories Yearbook (Everett, MA)

Page 5 text:

A Conservation About School School makes me so tired. Not just school, but homework too. No, maybe it ' s not school, but school is always the place where I ' m so tired because I do much other stuff. It ' s hard to be a good person when you ' re tired-when I ' m tired I get really self-centered and grumpy. People say I should stop doing all the other stuff I do and pay more attention to school. If I did, I ' d go crazy because I wouldn ' t have anything that meant anything to me any more- because school sure doesn ' t. My world at school really frustrates me- it ' s the hardest place I know of to live in. There ' s almost nothing there that really matters to me. There ' s noth¬ ing that touches me enough to make me want to do it. On top of this, it ' s sup¬ posed to be the center of my life. I ' m called a student; therefore, I suppose life at school should mean something to me, but it doesn ' t. There ' s nothing I ever wanted to get away from more than school. The classes, the tests, and the rules all seem so meaningless to me. I know this sounds like a lot of rhetoric, so I guess I should back it up with something. First, I have to think of what does matter to me. My friends, mostly, and the good times we have. By good times I mean our lives together, our love for one another. These words seem awfully out-of-place, or even grown-up, but I don ' t think they really are. You can learn to love anything, and I wish school had more to do with that. Anyway, the most important thing I ' ve learned in school is how to love-- how to value people and understand them. I guess I don ' t care much for the academic side, because it hasn ' t taught me that. Actually, most of what the academic world has taught me, I either never learned or just forgot. I ' ve had all this math and science and literature, and it doesn ' t seem to get me anywhere. I ' m not really sure if I know any of it, be¬ cause I never used it. What good is something I don ' t use? All the formulas I learned were good for passing tests. Is that worth it? I wish the things I have to study were worth something to me. I think we kid ourselves into thinking we ' re doing ourselves a favor by forcing ourselves to learn all that math and science. Some people tell me it ' ll help me understand the world better, but nobody ' s ever taught me how to understand--they ' ve only taught me things to understand. One of the hardest things to do in school is think! I mean really think. If I want to think of myself, or something really important to me, I ' m distracted. Formulas and figures, yes-but really learning something has to wait. But ideas die if you make them wait. A friend calls it getting sucked in. You feel like you ' ve just come out of a hole or a cage and you must get going and do what you want to do, but you get sucked back in again and all of the enthusiasm is gone. I hate it when that happens. I feel all dead inside. I feel like I ' ve given up something I shouldn ' t have.