The Front
The dominance of birds chirping and the hues of the world afresh every morning that I open my eyes, drowsy and weary, walking to my mirror thinking of the beginning of a repetitive day. I have grown to always think no matter what, I am going to be first. On the first day of school, I recall, I step on the sheer concretes of small and big classrooms ranging from a gamut of sizes and subjects, I immediately walk to the front of the class, take a glance, and without a second thought sit in the front chair that’s closest to my teacher, closest to the board, closest to education. I recall, in elementary school, when the echoes of the summer days began to vibrate, everyone was jumping up and down, not knowing how to act just because summer holidays were around the corner, when they would get to go home and play video games all day and night, travel with their cousins, and make slimes out of play-doh and glue. But as I gazed at the happiness and joy of others, I felt exceptional and special, because I was the only one with tears of misery. I liked school. I liked the smell of smooth chalk pencils and the little musty scent of the books. Every time I received my books I would go with my dad to cover them with fabric so they could last until the end of the year. You could not find a single torn paper on my books, or a single pencil mark that made it look ugly. I saw the world in rainbow colors.
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It was until middle school that I began to feel a change in the way I walked into class. I walked in while dreaming during the day instead of the night before. I walked with a foggy head and weighted shoulders as if I was carrying a huge backpack filled with highschool books and heavy bricks. I no longer understood why. Why was I so passionate and eager to learn and be ahead? Why was that interest and thirst for knowledge slowly fading away like I wiped the smokescreen of my dad’s car’s window on a winter morning on the way to school? Yet, I still sat in the front. Why did I no longer smell chalk and books? My books belonged to my locker. I rarely opened them. I set foot in the American four and five walled classrooms in 7th grade from a war torn country in central Asia. It was not so strange to me, until I sat on a table of 4 people and asked, “ Which page of the book are we on?” They looked at me in a peculiar way, as if I was in a state of madness. They told me they did not even use books as a daily guide. It was not so strange to me until I started typing in a metallic sheen of a chromebook, and found out what Aeries Portal was. Until I found out Aeries determined my Mountain Everest. My world, my universe was taken over by the artificials lights of a screen. I would check my grades, a bunch of letters with positive and negative signs on Aeries at least twice a day. Stress bubbled down to my spine and my stomach every time the due date was late, and every time I saw that negative sign next to the Alphabet letters of my grades. “A plus, B plus, A minus”, “ Gosh it’s went down by one percent”, “ If I make this one test it is going to be an A plus” I told myself walking home while scrolling on my other stress digital machine that had a tinier and smaller screen than the stress machine I usually stared at in school.
It was simple for me to adjust to the new habitat that felt more like a compulsory military that I had to join. High school, not so later, opened its gates as I ambiguously, with a blank mind of a white sheet full of faded pen ink, pressed its American password on its American activation lock. Only those with faded ink on a piece of paper could join. I was excited, but confused. The flame of confusion and bewilderment about “what am I going to do for college and my career?” is still burning in me. I feel like a robot and the world around me feels like a simulation. High school! Isn’t that a big word? It sounds to me like the name of a bulky puppet master puppeteering me like I am its marionette. It’s pulling my strings as I try to move myself, but it’s already tied to my wires. I feed my brain everyday with knowledge, the knowledge I don’t know will stay there if I cut the wires with the scissors of knowledge I actually want to keep. I question my questions. It sure triggers the rings of a paradox, but I question my questions. I ask myself about college and career but I have not, in a while, asked “what am I learning and why should I be learning?” between every break, I transition from room to room, people to people, faces to faces, and subjects to subjects. I am subjected to learn the laws of logarithms and sine graphs in Enhanced Math three, and the consequences of imperialism in world history. But I am yet to understand how I can properly communicate my thoughts, manage my personal finance, and gracefully and passionately use my curiosity for a tactical change. My path is blurry as I try to see through the crowded monkey bars where kids used to swing on them, replaced with painted walls with posters and teenagers walking with their necks bent, some staring at the stress machine screens, and some biting their nails. I see the world in black and white.
It has only been 3 years since I immigrated from a third world country to an advanced technologically developed land of the Empire State Statue. But I miss falling in love with school, a fun fair, where each step ascended with ease as the brain filled with pure joy. When my “Aha” moments gave me pure happiness and made me eager for walking up more stairs. Where God-given talents would be appreciated and where the innate need of the little me to feel passion in knowing what gave colors to the universe made me curious. I miss sitting in the front.
