Creating Something that Lasts: Taking You Through My Past
The main reason I started this blog was that I wanted to create something that lasts. When you go back to the beginning of your public education days and remember all the assignments, book reports, and group projects that you’ve ever done - have any of them created a lasting impact throughout your life as of now? Most of the things that I’ve done throughout my life that had a lasting impact on me I haven’t done in school but through my own initiative. What really bothers me is how young people are told since this is all free and paid through tax payer money we should just be grateful about it and keep our mouths shut. Imagine if an adult was forced to do something just because it was supported by other people, who were forced to pay for it, you should just be quiet and be grateful (totalitarianism ring a bell?).
DISCLAIMER: This is my story I am talking about myself in the second person
The USSR Comes to the USA
Through the years of indentured servitude that are supposedly “for your own good”, somewhere around the middle 5th grade things start going south. At that time you have basic English, Writing and Math skills that you can use for a basic entry level job if you really wanted one. The problem is when the stress kicks in you have assignments with due dates and tests that you have to study for and they are harder than the past 4 years of your life. At that point you get through it. Congratulations you’re on your way to middle school or, as I like to call it, hell on earth. All of a sudden this place you spent your life in turns into a gulag. A jail for the body, mind, and soul. Your teachers are boring and the work they give you is almost as boring as they are. The one thing that’s on your mind is “When will the torture be over?” Then you finally get home and you are still on their time (their leash) because you have to do homework. The one thing that you can count in your life to escape from this mental and physical prison known as school is video games. They take you to new and fascinating worlds because it’s too boring and uninspiring to live in your own. Then in 8th grade it reaches a fever pitch. You are sick and tired OF ALL OF IT. Seeing the same thing everyday - the same routine and the same assignments. Some of your teachers are fascists who hate their jobs and sometimes you wonder to yourself under what rock your school found them. All of this stress is making your life a mess but you are assured from the gulag, which you are forced to be in by your teachers and parents, that it’ll all be worth it in the end and that you’re just not old enough to understand it yet.
Light at the End of the Tunnel?
Then the nightmare is over; 8th grade is over and done with. Thank heavens that you can step out of hell. The last day of it you get all the brown-nosers up on the stage talking about how they loved their experiences there and that the memories will last a lifetime. You on the other hand have no idea what the heck they are talking about and you want to avoid any kind of experience that remotely resembles middle school like the plague. Never again in your life do you want to feel as stressed, alone, and as underappreciated as you did in that hellhole, and you pray that an experience like that never happens to you again. There is almost light at the end of the tunnel but now you have to go to high school which isn’t as bad and as stressful as middle school. In fact you start doing much better than you’ve ever done in school before. You do your best on every assignment and you get the results and to your joy you start getting better grades. It’s still hard but not the rotten, soul-sucking dump that your middle school was. The thing that you know for sure is that after 12 years of this you want to be OUT!! You don’t want to stay another minute longer than you have to. You want a job and you really want to see what it means to be an “adult”.
But There’s More...
Unfortunately the stupid society you live in tells you that 12 years is not enough anymore - you “need” college. As devastating as this sounds for you and as disappointed as feel, you look at your options and decide to go to community college to get the edge on the people who only went to high school. While you are there you work with the career center to get some kind of job but alas, it is to no avail. Then a recession hits in 2008 that you did absolutely nothing to contribute to and by default there go all of your job prospects. Finally you graduate community college, job hunt for about a year and end up at a McDonald’s (aka the same EXACT place you were told you would end up if you dropped out of high school). Then you wonder to yourself if “adults” should ever be trusted again.
Of course the story doesn’t end there and I may have left out a few details but I hope you get the overall gist. The moral of the story is that we shouldn’t treat our education system as if it’s the panacea to humanity’s problems. Instead, I think our education system is infected and as a result it’s infecting ourselves and our children to this day with its inability to look at people holistically instead of putting everyone in a box. Looking back on all the things I was forced to do back then against my free will, none of it actually really lasted. The good grades I got just provided me with a dopamine spike for maybe a week and then it was back to the daily grind.
We Can Do Better Than This
I always knew that I enjoyed adventure and exploring. In addition to that, I was always fascinated when the older people in my life talked about “when you grow up” and what that really meant. Unfortunately and ironically, the “stupid” education to me acted as an incubator to the grown up world instead of a guide to the grown up world. In the grown up world there are no tests or quizzes and hardly anything theoretical. You do things and you are a commodity with talents and skills that you sell to the employer. I didn’t learn those hard truths at any time in my education career.
The part of this that is the biggest travesty of all is that nowhere in high school is there a transition period to the “grown up” world. You just get a piece of paper and then it’s sink or swim. I will close with what I said in the title when I was depressed and frustrated during my job hunt. I thought to myself “Did any of those things that I did in the education system last as in follow me to that point in my life?” Every test, project and book report I had - did any of those things spill over to helping me as an adult and serve as something that would guide me during my stress and frustration? Unfortunately, the answer was no. That’s why by making this blog I intend to make a lasting impression for those who feel just like me and who know that in this day and age, we need a better system than this. We need something that doesn’t leave people behind and that actually pays attention to their talents. This is the revolutionary Armada that I am creating: a revolution of minds and a new paradigm at which to look at the world we live in and the institutions that we are so quick to defend.