Last week my english class turned in our last journal review for the year. There was relief and panic in the air as some rejoiced the last of the essays and the others made frantic corrections at a last minute attempt to save their grade. One of the journals written by Nicole Fallert struck me particularly hard because of how accurately it captured the general ambiance of junior year. Even though it is addressed to the Class of 2015, I believe any high schooler can identify with the qualities described.
Dear Class of 2015,
Just a few weeks ago, we were assigned an essay in AP English that would need to be completed the same weekend many of us were to take the SAT. Upon hearing the news, my classmates and I frantically scribbled upon weathered agenda pages, exchanging weary eye contact and exhausted sighs. Mr. Kirk explained the upcoming due date as hushed whispers panicked.
“But I have an AP Bio test too!”
“Ugh, I’m going to FAIL!”
Wild, animal-like students covered their faces with their hands, shrieking like birds in a tropical rainforest, the humid air hanging with anxiety. Pawing for mercy, the classroom fell prey to what seemed like a death sentence at the malignant whimsy of a teacher.
Although we no longer trail the gawky smell of freshman and sophomore years, we juniors carry a cloud of caustic, competitive stink more putrid to the senses than any other hormonal fume. It seems as if this year, the smartest people I have come to know have learned to engineer all conversations so that they orbit around the topics of college and junior year.
We have accepted our new lifestyles of high paper consumption and little sleep with few doubts in a dehumanizing system. Our robotic, competitive conversations never ponder why we respond to the physical and mental pressures of high school with mental self-destruction in the face of a challenge.
If the number of students who frequent the word “fail” when regarding their school work were actually failing school, there would be a significant amount of eleventh graders attending an extra year of high school. We adapt a feigned sense of incompetence that fails to recall any sense of self accumulated over the course of the past sixteen to seventeen years. Too many times during a school day, students mope and sigh at school work, referencing inevitable futures at community colleges and minimum wage employment because of a series of world-ending B plusses. Denial of our self worth does not display our ambition, but rather serves as an unfair assessment of the value of both ourselves and each other. It seems that all I hear are conversations programmed to discuss the topic of THE FUTURE (I write this phrase in capital letters as to emulate God, whose voice, perhaps second to that of Morgan Freeman, seems fitting enough to capture the significance upon which juniors place the years after high school).
Just like no one wants to hear the skinny girl say she’s fat, no one wants to see the smart kid act stupid. Peers are not here to nurture insecurities. Rather than downplay yourself in an effort that begs for reassurance, own up to the fact that if a result is undesirable, you are not a machine, but a living person who is capable of learning and changing.
Also, when having one of these typical junior conversations, take note of the reactions of your peers when someone decides to announce that he or she “looves SAT math!” Faces will be twisted with annoyance. If you rock at math, all the more power to you. I know you’ll go far and surround yourself with people just as loud as you are, while I sip my tea in silence, counting my millions, admiring my Pulitzer Prize because I was good at SAT writing. We will all take standardized tests and receive scores that are suited to our abilities. If you are the comparing type, silence to your calls of self- importance! This is not Candy Crush. There’s absolutely no need to study scores.
Unheeded, competitive appetites have taught us to watch others succeed and to feel sorry for ourselves. The reality prevails that the only way we will ever savor life is through the creation of our own rewards from our failures. We must not fear unworthiness, for the value of our characters is determined by our ability to abandon a battle for perfection that is inevitably lost to our own humanity. We must stop attempting to become one another, for there is no singular image that defines the “right” way with which to encounter the future. Competition exhausts us, and we are left forgotten fruits, who in their effort to create the perfect future, failed to realize the sweetness of the present.
Sincerely, Nicole Fallert
--Jaagrit
P.S.- Thank you to Nicole for letting me use this splendidly written piece and I hope you enjoyed it!
