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

Page 6 text:

Sometimes, too, I feel like I just can ' t penetrate into an idea enough. I was reading a book the other day and the words the human condition came up. I wanted to figure out what it was, but I couldn ' t think. I really wanted to know. But I couldn ' t grasp it. I just didn ' t know how. It ' s like picking up a musical in¬ strument right after you ' ve heard a really good song, and you want to play it, but you can ' t because you just don ' t know how. It ' s frustrating. I wonder if all the stuff I ' ve learned is any good at all. I just wish they ' d taught me how to think. When I say learning to think , I guess it sounds kind of ambigous. It ' s hard to describe what thinking is, or what I mean by learning to think. I tried to describe it before, but I ' m still not sure I got it all across. A lot of people assume that anyone can think. I wonder. Thinking is like seeing both sides of an issue. That ' s hard to do. You see, when you ' re a kid, things can get pretty confusing. Right and wrong. Good and bad. All get confused, and you ' re never sure which is which. When you ' re unsure, both sides seem just as good or just as bad. That way, not knowing anything is good--you never have to hurt anybody ' s feelings by tell¬ ing him he ' s bad. But when I say that, people say that I ' m supposed to be strong and hurt him because he ' s bad But who says he ' s bad? Maybe he ' s wrong, maybe he ' s made a mistake, but why tell him he ' s bad? There ' s nothing bad about a mistake. It ' s human! If you call some¬ body bad, he starts to believe you and thinks he can ' t be a good friend for any¬ body. Then he ' s in trouble. But we still call people bad anyway. 2

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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.

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Take sex. (That sure is one thing school hasn ' t taught me anything about!) Suppose a guy and a girl want to make out and fool around. Whom are they hurting? Are they making a mistake? Some people think they are. I ' m not really sure. But anyway, in¬ stead of just telling them that they ' ve made a mistake, we go and tell them they ' re bad and evil and sinful and all of that. They get bawled out and everyone gets all flustered. Why? Why can ' t we just sit down calmly and try to talk to them and see whether or not they ' re doing the right thing? Instead of that, they get blasted for being bad, and worse than that, they believe it and start to think that they are really bad. I brought this up because it happens so much in school. When a kid gets a problem right, he ' s a good boy. If he does not, he ' s a bad boy. Why is he bad? What ' s wrong with a mistake? Why does one kid have to suffer so that another kid can get a high mark? People talk to me about love and understanding, and then I see kids worried sick because their marks aren ' t good, or they couldn ' t get a right ans¬ wer. It seems as though the teacher can not take enough time to understand a kid. He only has to give the kid a mark on a piece of paper. I wish I could be friends with more of the teachers, but school work always get in the way.