A Letter to the Underclassmen
To the underclassmen who know no better,
My name is Melody, though some of my friends call me Mel. I’m a senior here at Ike. Being in high school has been a very strange experience for me, I have turned in work at the last minute, I’ve made friends aplenty, yet more than ever I feel outcast and like I don’t put in the work that I should be. High School is not for me, but I love academics, I love learning, heck, I even want to be a teacher. My life is entrenched in learning, but high school has been a very isolating experience for me, doing work feels pointless, interacting with people feels forced, and all in all I am drained.
We compare ourselves to each other, we compete. The school makes students compete with their creativity, by how good their essays are, or their grades in a class. Even in AP classes, where it sometimes feels like everyone is burnt out, we compete. We have lost care for what we do, yet we turn in the best work in the school (when we turn it in) and we compete with each other to get that last calculus question right. Sometimes, we compete to see who can do the least work and still pass.
How has it gotten to the point that I can brag about how little I do, and how much I get for it? I may be an AP student, but an AP student is not necessarily a student who has an amazing GPA; an AP student, in my experience, is a student who gives minimal effort, while still getting the reward of going to college. Even I have had this thought process for a long time, but is that healthy? Will procrastination stop at college? The answer is no. All I’ve known is minimal effort, so why would I change?
It’s disorienting to know that as an AP student I am at the top of the school, but I feel lazy; I feel like I do nothing to deserve praise from my teachers. There has been one time where somebody else confronted me about my procrastination (in fact, I’m in his room right now as I write this). I wasn’t turning in any work for Journalism, and when Mr. DeWitt asked what I had, I could do nothing but open my hands to show blank palms. Dewitt told me to do better. I have been a “gifted student” all my life, and for the first time in my highschool career, I was told to do better.
So how do I feel about high school? I feel like I need to do better. I may walk out to protest with a red apple for education, I may play in a musical, or write an article about this-or-that, but I am not doing enough. Senior year is finally almost over, I can almost go home and work on my major, I can play guitar, I can be angry at the government for refusing my identity, but in the end, I need to do better.
Yours truly, Melody Rogers, Heritage University 2029.
