Odd, but I’m not mad about it
By Ellen L.
Highschool sucks. Ask 99% of people in my grade, they dislike it and so do I. Besides the excessive drama between my friends, a majority of what my teachers teach us is how to memorize a bunch of nonsense, regurgitate it onto a test, then move on. Tests stress me out so much that it can lead to me not remembering how to do things, which then leads to me flunking the test. AND I HAVE ASIAN PARENTS. Then there’s homework. You get loaded with it, which takes hours, half the time never finishing it. Which also stresses me. To be blatantly honest, I don’t understand anything either. The lectures are understandable like, “Gravity attracts us to Earth.” But when I look over my homework, it asks questions about things along the lines of, “The particles and their quantum charges make the wave function create waved space time.” And I’m confuzzled. This cycle goes on and on. I don’t understand anything, then I proceed to cram everything I learned into 8 hours of studying prior to the test. It used to work when I was 12, now I’m getting low C’s. Since I’m heavily involved with my theatre classes, I typically work on crew for many productions. However, when it was the one week where I had to stay till 9 after school everyday, I had three huge tests back to back. All in my least favorite subjects: English, Computing, and Spanish. At this point I’m going to take the fat loser title and move on. How do I pass this test if I understand nothing about the lessons, and have no time to prepare? Simple. I decided to not study. I’ve never had luck in the past anyways, despite spending 8 hours studying and sleeping well the night before. So, I showed up to school, getting 4 hours of sleep and looking like a nervous wreck as if I just ran 10 marathons while a tornado chased me around. I accepted my fate and took the test class by class. The booming clock on the wall ticked back and forth. Anytime I heard ‘tick tock’, it felt like a natural disaster was about to occur. I stared at my test, the words flew away cackling. Soon, it became blank. A hurricane of sweat and headaches flood my body. I scribbled gibberish and continued having a panic attack in the middle of class. When I heard the end of class bell ring, I handed my test, and ran away. This repeated for the next two classes. I never desired to look back. ‘Just move on, this totally doesn’t determine your whole future,’ I thought to myself. Weeks fly by and I check my grades, ‘Surprisingly good.’ What? I opened my notifications and realized that I got an A on every single test! I instantly hollered on the top of my lungs in my room at 1am. Did this wake my parents up? Maybe, but all I can say is happiness.