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

Page 8 text:

I ' ve heard that school is supposed to prepare me for life. Are the quadratic equations and the proper tenses of a French verb teaching me how to love? After all, the most important thing in life is learning to love, isn ' t it? If it isn ' t I ' m sure I ' ll be leaving soon. My schoolwork doesn ' t prepare me to love and understand my friends. I ' ve learned more about helping people from the science fiction I ' ve read than the things I ' ve learned in school. I just read over the stuff I ' ve written and I guess I ' m being a little one-sided. I hate it when I do that, because it ' s really not giving everyone a real chance. I just can ' t be all negative, for nothing is all negative. I feel guilty because I ' ve been screaming about how bad school is. I said before that I ' ve learned a lot about how to love and love in high school, and that ' s really important to me. All my friends have helped me a lot- and they ' ve made a lot of school a good time. I just get mad when I see so much time wasted and so many people hurt. I think a lot of my teachers feel trapped by the situation because they do make mistakes and hurt people. I wish more of them wouldn ' t be so afraid to be friends with me. A tr -g J Mr W ' ; M V. ' % k im Hi Jr -{ A ' ? | |i if.. ' .r lV ' ' .‘•j 4

Page 7 text:

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.

Page 9 text:

Well, I guess I ' ve said a lot of things about how much time I think I ' ve wasted learning stuff like that. I bet you ' re wondering what I would like to learn. I ' d like to learn how to be your friend, you whoever you are, reading this. I ' d like to know how to defeat all the fears that keep me from knowing and trusting you. Whoever you are, I don ' t even know you, but I think you must be a beautiful person. If I ever meet you, and I ' m foolish enough not to like you, it ' s my fault, not yours. It ' s just that I ' m human, and I can ' t make it all the time. I wish I could learn how to make it and be someone ' s friend, more of the time, because friends are what life is for. I guess it seems like I ' m skipping all around, writing this, and getting off the subject. Really, I ' m not. I ' ll agree it ' s probably confusing, but I ' m just think¬ ing about school, and writing what comes to mind. If I were to try to write the perfect paper, I ' d only be able to write about certain things and I might miss something about school we ' ve never seen before. It ' s good sometimes just to let yourself go, and write freely, and don ' t chop out anything because all we chop out is part of us too, and part of everything- so maybe we should look at them once in a while. Maybe there ' s a clue here to what ' s going on in the world. After all, we really do want to know what ' s going on, don ' t we? Isn ' t that what matters? We can ' t follow the rules and find out what the guy before us learned, can we? Don ' t we want to know new things? I like to learn new things, and if I can, why can ' t we share them? Maybe if we found out something new together we could be friends. Greg Tucker 5