SCHOOL APPRECIATION
You're not too cool for schoolBY GARRETT HILL ON NOVEMBER 15, 2013
“I want to go home; I don’t feel like doing anything.”
We are only a few months into the school year, and phrases like this can already be heard echoing throughout the halls of Rose. I’m sure every one of us has gotten used to hearing these types of things on a daily basis, and probably used to saying them ourselves, but is school really as bad as we like to make it seem? Simply take a moment to think about the complaints you might have made over the past few weeks; are they really justified? I cannot speak for others, but my typical complaints consist of not wanting to do some form of work, being tired or just wanting to go home, and when I realize that those are my biggest problems with learning, I feel incredibly selfish. The reason for this is that there are millions of teenagers just like me from all around the world who will never know what it’s like to receive a formal education. I can guarantee many of these people would kill for that opportunity, an opportunity which we are given every single day, and for free at that. I know the American public school system is far from perfect, and having our state wear the title of 49th biggest spender on education doesn’t help that fact, but we still have a lot to gain from this system if we embrace it to the best of our ability. Sure, I’ve forgotten plenty of school material over the years, but the more I think about it, I’ve retained quite a lot more than I thought. Sure, I don’t remember how to find the area ratios of different shaded regions within a trapezoid, but I know a good deal about many other subjects, things I couldn’t dream of knowing had I not gone to school. I think that what we retain from school helps us to discover what we care about, and helps us rule out things we absolutely can’t stand doing. Whether we realize it or not, these classes we so often dread ultimately shape our futures in some way; we just have to approach them with a better mindset, one that is open and humble at the same time, one that makes us appreciate the opportunity we have here, so they can shape our future for better rather than for worse. These ideas don’t apply to just the academic side of education, but also the school environment as a whole. Don’t be one of the people wearing a collared shirt on Roll Out of Bed Day because you think spirit week is dumb. Don’t be the person who never comes to a sporting event or a dance because you think they’re pointless. High school is only four short years of our lives, so try everything, seek to gain as much as you can from this system, you might find yourself learning much more than you thought this little high school by the train tracks could teach you. We have to be here in the first place, why not make high school worth the ride? HTML Comment Box is loading comments...
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