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Back to school
By
MICHAEL BOYLAN
mboylan@thecitizennews.com
It’s time for our area
youngsters to go to back to school and I must say, I do not envy them
in the least.
Some people say they yearn to go back to those “carefree days”
of their youth, but I know what a hunk of bull that is. While high school
students may still be years away from being completely responsible human
beings, high school is not a carefree place. There is peer pressure to
contend with, incredibly hard exams on inane topics to take, school lunches,
and teachers that seem to have been hatched from a pod and not born.
Don’t get me wrong, I had a good time in high school and got good
grades, but I still have nightmares about taking an exam I haven’t
studied for or giving a book report in the nude. Those are psychological
scars, my friends. It has to be a deep-seated fear to keep popping up
almost 10 years after taking algebra 1.
Algebra 1 also leads me to my next point — and parents and administrators
may hate me for this — some of the math they teach you is useless.
I can honestly say that I haven’t factored since I was 16 and I don’t
feel any worse for the wear. Hypotenuses never come up in my daily life
and I never had to figure out when two trains were going to collide on
a train track. In fact, I have only been on a train a handful of times.
Also, by the time you get to college (and you should all go to college)
you will have forgotten the math anyway. I took college algebra during
the first quarter of my freshman year and had to drop it (along with 75
percent of the freshman class) because I had not taken an algebra class
since my junior year of high school. You may be different and like math
and to that I say, “More power to you. call me in a couple of years
and you can be my accountant.”
High school seems to be a lot different nowadays, too. I don’t mean
the fact that there is a police officer in the hallways or that the threat
of school violence looms over students on a daily basis, but a majority
of the student body seem to be punks. That is a generalization, I know,
but I think many people (including current students and faculty members)
would agree with me.
Kids today grow up way too fast, thanks to the Internet, television and
the need to grow up quickly. By the need to grow up quickly, I mean the
added responsibilites at school, home and work at a younger age, increased
peer pressure and the threat of violence. So, we have a bunch of 14-year-old
kids who act (and want to act) like they are 18. Hence, the scene at The
Market.
Let’s just say that when I was 14, all of my dates were huge group
dates that never went past holding hands. I had no idea what drugs were
and the kids that were partying and getting drunk were like a colony of
lepers. I may have been more naive than a lot of people, but this was
not that long ago. I did not know anybody that got arrested and I was
expected to be in by at least 11 p.m. until my senior year.
So my advice is to slow down and enjoy your time in high school, but get
out as soon as you can (without dropping out of school altogether). You
will have a great time in high school if you let yourself, but don’t
get fooled into believing that life never gets any better. Trust me, I’m
25 now and can virtually do anything that I want, wherever and whenever
I want. For instance, right now, I am half-clothed, drinking a beer and
watching racy movies on a cable channel.
It doesn’t get any better than that.
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