From five to eighteen years old, we’re all imprisoned for 6 hours a day, at school. For me, it’s about 7 and a half hours of hell itself in its earthly form, Lowell High School. Perfection is expected and an A- just won’t cut it. The crazy Lowell pressure is applied daily to its sleep-deprived students, and I just don’t see the point. The crazy amounts of pressure applied to students just cause them to be more stressed and unhappy, rather than more academically successful. For me, I realized that academics are not the most important thing in the world so I’ve been able to deal with the pressure at Lowell pretty well. I just tell myself, “School isn’t all that matters. All that matters is your happiness.” But no one at my school really seems to agree with me. At Lowell, it seems that everyone but me has it programmed into their minds that school is the number one priority, no exceptions. The pressure and stress that is put on everyone by the school build up to intolerable amounts, but the thought of failing is just inconceivable. I, thankfully, realized the flaw in the system and stopped myself before I went down the, “A- isn’t good enough for me,” road. This may make you think that I don’t care about school but really, I do. I just think the system at Lowell is flawed. I really can’t put my all into something that won’t provide support for its stressed-out students.
For the past few months I’ve loved being at Sunset Media Wave and as this is my final post, I just wanted to share my thoughts. School overall is not a good environment but here at SMW it really is. I get to express myself in ways I can’t at school, with my writing and style. Leaving school and coming to SMW excited me each week. For me, it was an outlet away from the stressors of the outside world. A place where I could just be who I am and work on what I love. Being here gave me a chance to see that working on something I love doing, like writing, doesn’t have to suck as it does at school. I just need to be in the right place.
