school
This is an essay that I wrote in high school with the voice recorder because if I were to have typed it, I think I would have been typing for days:
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Albert Einstein once said, “Once you stop learning, you start dying.” This quote explains why I have felt defeated for almost six months now. I am not learning anymore. No one is. Our math common core has gotten moved around so much that my grade has lost entire lessons of certain kinds of math. Even English vocabulary got lost somewhere. School these days is about getting things done because we have no time to do anything. My test scores this year are the worst they have ever been, and our teachers treat us like we are robots that have no other social life. In 1869, an organization called the Knights of Labor was seeking an eight-hour workday. These workers were trying to have eight hours to work, eight hours of free time, and eight hours of sleep. When I wrote this down in class I decided to do extra notes on the side about the daily life of a student. As students, we are in school for seven hours. We do homework for four hours. I get about six hours of sleep a night (if that). That leaves us with six hours. Now imagine if students (like me) have a job or sports that also take up some of their day. That is subtracting AT LEAST two hours. That leaves us with four hours a day of free time. And that does not even count driving places and getting ready for school. If we took that into consideration, which I did later, it ends up being a whopping one hour of free time a day. Today I used my one hour on this essay. My anxiety started in sixth grade. I would shake myself to sleep until 12 in the morning because of projects or homework that I was already stressed about for the next day. It only got worse. I figured out that I was smart enough to handle these things until high school. I play sports and I babysit. It was not until junior year that I began to struggle with fitting these things in my schedule. I have friends in the tenth grade that even struggle with time management now. It is getting out of hand. I have teachers that switch up due dates constantly. When a teacher switches up a due date, students like me who space things out to where they have enough time to do them without stressing themselves out cannot take it. I have had a teacher who claimed her class did not ask for help ever. For this class, I stayed after school and even got up the courage to ask questions during class, but it OBVIOUSLY still was not enough for the teacher. I know I am not the only one, but I cry out to my teachers for help. There have been days in class where I have just cried because of either stress, grades, or something a teacher has said. I study for tests, and I do my homework, but I still feel like I am failing. Not because I have an F, but because I am not learning. I got my first B in my first semester of junior year. And if I am being honest, I was not mad about the B. I know that I worked my hardest with the time that I had because we had a shorter semester (thanks to the school board). I had FIVE classes this semester and all my teachers were cramming in work at the same time. There were classes I was interested in that I could not focus on because of other classes I had. Teachers hand out homework like we have no life outside of school. School and teachers are the reasons that I cannot be social anymore. I do not want to go on trips, I do not want to be in clubs, and I do not want to miss school ever. I even hate doing sports now because I know that means I have no weekends off and I must leave school early at times and/or get home late to do homework. I have told someone before that if I get sick during school, I will have to tough it out because if I miss, I will get left behind even more. I will admit I have cried every day of junior year. It makes me even more angry when I get upset because making an appointment with my counselor means I will have to push homework to the side for an hour. I am tired of being tired and feeling dumb. I live off caffeine as a 16-year-old. This is ridiculous and at this point I am just mad. Something must change.
