Angela

14

School Meets Reality

The sun rose and everything fell. For five days a week, seven hours out of the twenty-four, and +12 years of the 80 years the average human lives in the United States, more than 25% of the US population goes to school. *Man, who did the math? You’d think the person who divided life and school time would actually, you know, make a better ratio.* Ask any student, regardless of what grade, they’ll say school is a complete waste of time. To them, assignments, lectures, homework, etc. are simply… useless tasks. *Yep, sounds about right.*

*If you’ve been out of school for a while, let me bring back some memories.* For this story, let’s focus on one girl- Alex.
6:30 am. The alarm goes off, blaring a repetitive beeping in her ear. Of course, like every other teenager, Alex hits snooze multiple times before actually dragging herself out of bed and into the bathroom. She sorts her needs out and returns to her room to start her “beauty routine”. *If she was a guy though, she would skip the next half-hour or so getting ready as society tells guys they don’t need makeup and such to look good.* First, she starts the extensive process of applying makeup, poking herself in the eye a few times in the process. After making herself “presentable”, she puts her contacts in cause, you know, everyone else got them when they entered high school so she did too. Then, Alex sorts out the rat's’ nest on her head with a brush, straightener, and hair spray, but, when that ultimately fails, she grabs a ponytail and puts her hair up. *Note- it’s not as easy as it looks on TV. It takes a good five-ten minutes to get your hair in order. Then, another two to make sure your face isn’t pulled back because more likely than not, you are gonna make it too tight, causing you to look like a Halloween decoration.*
7:00 am. After gathering herself together, Alex is finally ready to change out of her old pajamas. Unlike many girls, Alex actually sets up her outfits the night before. *Although if we were following one who didn’t, then the whole schedule would have to be push back another hour.* After staring at herself in the mirror though, there is a 95% chance she’s gonna change the outfit anyway. This causes her to go through everything in the closet, making it look like a F5 tornado came by, but ending up on the outfit she started with anyway. *Was I the only one who did this?*
7:30. They say you should have a balanced breakfast every morning but who in the world has time for that! If she’s lucky, Alex will remember to grab a snack bar before getting into the car with her mom, but odds are she’ll forget. *I always did.*
7:35. Her mom drops Alex off on her way to work, barely making it in time before homeroom. She rushes in, takes her seat, and proceeds to stare at the clock, waiting for next period.

*At this point, I’m giving up on going hour by hour of Alex’s day so I’m gonna explain what happens in each class. After all, high school classes are different each day.*

Science. You’d think it would be experiments, labs, and dissections every week, but no. It’s notes, drawing, notes, tests, and more notes. *Did I mention notes?* This is the class that sucks unless you get the teacher that sets everything on fire. It’s also the class you have to remember to bring color pencils and a sharpener. Otherwise, you have a lot of catching up to do tonight.

Math. It stinks. Your teacher gives you a section of the book to read, take notes on, and test on at the end of the week. The homework is a set of problems the teacher glances at to make sure there are numbers on the page, then checks you off. Most everyone learned this by the second week of school, but there was the one person who did the work anyway. *Cough, cough, me.* However, it is good to have this person be in your friend group since, if needed, they would sometimes let you copy their answers. *Sometimes.* The only grades that really mattered were the tests and the projects. Whenever the teacher said there would be a project, the whole class looked at the smartest kid in the class and fought to be in their group.

Social Studies. This was the class you just drew in your journal while the teacher talked about European history or whatever and then used the history book to fill out the note sheets. If you were lucky, you got the teacher that would force the students to do skits on the spot. *Yeah, I say “lucky” sarcastically. I mean unless you were a drama student.*

English. This class was the one you dreaded going to. The first-semester lessons were the same ones every year- theme, plot, characters, etc. Though you realized the second day that you forgot EVERYTHING over the Summer so you were semi-thankful. However, this was also the class you were forced to read “classic” literature and annotate. Even the book nerds admitted to hating writing in the margins. Then, you had to “share with the class” about the book even though half the class gave up and used sparknotes despite the teacher telling them not to. *They annoyingly never got caught though.* English also had vocabulary lessons which no one ever used in their writing unless the thesaurus suggested it.

Physical Education (PE). The worst two credits you were forced to get. Everyone hated changing out into the PE uniforms, being pitted against each other and the actual athletic people, and running. *Especially running.* Then again, if you were one of the athletic people, you enjoyed this class. *How?! Just how?* The worst thing was when your crush was in this class. If you are a guy, you tried to act tough and act like running didn’t feel like internal bleeding. While if you are a girl, you tried to be good at the team games so he thought you were sporty. *If you were me though, you gave up on the whole “impressing your crush”. I felt like I was dying every time I ran and eventually I stopped hiding my pain and collapsed after every run.* This is also the class that you pretended to be sick in order to get out of the mile only to find out you would have to make it up while your crush was there and watching. *True story.*

Foreign language. Some schools require it, others don’t, but you took it because you knew colleges are looking for it. This was the class that friendships were tested. *If you finished the worksheet before me, you better give me the answers or wait for me. We said we were gonna work together, yet you went ahead!* Also, this was the class your tongue decided not to work properly and your brain decided to forget everything.

Electives. You thought these would be the best classes since you got to pick them. Yeah... no. The first day or two was fun, but you quickly realized you had to actually learn stuff that isn’t on the internet and it turned into a nightmare. *When Google couldn’t make gear-clock art and I had to pull out Yahoo or Ask.com, I knew I was screwed.* Electives were also the classes with the most group projects. You were either stuck with a terrible, non-working group or… no that’s it. On the contrary, when the teacher gave you the freedom to choose your group, you were either with the working friends or the “I don’t care about the project but I care about my grade so I’m gonna criticize everything my group does but not contribute” group. *The worst was when you had no friends in that class or one friend that decides to go to another group. Yeah… We aren’t friends anymore.* It also seemed like these were the classes most people got called in/out of. When your classmates got to leave early, everyone glared at them for leaving us in prison. However, if you came in late, everything stopped and people stared at you like you’ve murdered someone. *Though, I probably murdered two.*

*Anyway, that’s the gist of class credits you have to take to graduate high school. Don’t get me started on extracurriculars and community service or cliches. Believe me, we’d be here until a preschooler graduates twelfth grade. For the meantime, let’s fast forward a bit and keep following Alex, but this time it’s her last actual class of high school before she graduates.*
Yet again Alex found herself lost in the midst of her thoughts. Even if it was her last day in this chair, this room, this school, something deep within her bubbles up- memories. From nervous first days to countless awkward conversations to dances and proms to heartbreak to senior pranks, this school was where she practically grew up. Soon college will come and go too, but then what? She guesses she’ll find out soon enough. Though she’s happy to leave and finally get started on making her own path in life, she’s gonna miss the comfort of having a routine laid out for her, as now the training wheels come off and the big guns come out. *Wait, training wheels to guns! Really?*
Silence swept across the room as all eyes turned to the clock counting down the seconds. Finally, what would be relief on any other day, came a smoothie of emotions. People all around Alex cheered while others, like her, were silent. Then, a smile broke out on her face. At first shy like it was that first day so long ago, then crazy like a madman in an asylum. Everyone rushed out the door, carrying Alex with them, an unstoppable tidal wave. Yet, she managed to break free and ended up being one of the last of her class in the building. Finally, she walked the steps her classmate trampled not long ago. Alex stared at the door handle and slowly turned the knob.