“I just want to go home.”
“God, I hate this school.”
“I can’t wait to get out of here.”
Returning to school means returning to perpetual misery for a lot of students. Being back on a demanding schedule with difficult teachers and piles of homework spells massive stress. Pressure from parents and colleges certainly doesn’t help lessen the strain for anyone. Thus, August: complete and utter torture.
Statements like those above have already found their home in the voices of many students. Between fleeting strangers in the hall and familiar faces in class, it’s possible to hear sentiments like these several times a day. Today’s work culture world creates a high tension environment, and it’s far from uncommon to feel victimized by it. Abundant anxiety builds bitterness toward a mandatory education, and these negative emotions tend to overtake recognition of the opportunity school presents.
School is supposed to be a beneficial environment that teaches people social skills, critical thinking, communication habits, and confidence. The material itself comes secondary to a school’s mission to create well-rounded individuals. However, it’s easy for this mission to get foggy, as any math student well knows. Students who protest learning advanced trigonometric functions because they’re unnecessary miss the point of the subject: memorizing math equations isn’t the goal, the skills and focus it teaches are. Long word problems solving for x force the brain to work harder and maintain concentration, which is useful in the so-called real world.
Unfortunately, classes don’t train students on how to fully exploit their teachings, but it isn’t possible for them to. Counselors and SEL teachers can lecture on the importance of a “positive mindset,” but telling anyone that they need to think positively has historically had the opposite effect. Teachers are left with a dilemma: present a lesson filled with empty words and overdone morals, or say nothing. Neither option tends to convince a classroom full of bored teenagers.
If adults can’t persuade students, the only alternatives are peers imparting their own wisdom or one coming to the conclusion themself. In an attempt to do the former, here’s your reminder that school is for you, a chance to gain a leg up in life. Teenagedom is a brief era of life but one full of so many opportunities to create yourself. Classes are there to expand your horizons, teachers to offer help. With so little time in high school, why spend seven hours of each day hating it? You don’t have to be optimistic and flexible—that’s unrealistic to ask of someone with so many stressors. Just try not to pour the little energy you have into resentment.
