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Friday, August 17, 2012

The first week of school has caused some strange things to happen.

So, you know how I haven't been here writing every day, like I was for a while?

School has started.
But it's not like that. There is no Happy to be found at a school. That's just my "I'm okay" face.

And to be clear, so that I don't just seem like a whiny teenager, I'm going to tell you that I go to a College-prep school that focuses heavily on academics, not just the paychecks of its students' parents. We are expected to take classes that demand college-level amounts of work without any of the free time and flexibility enjoyed by college students. We are not allowed Happy until Thanksgiving Break. 

The reason there is no Happy to be found at school is kind of enormous and vague and blobby. There are a lot of factors. One of them is schedule. We used to have a schedule that was very hard, but miles easier compared to the one they've instated this year. We take seven classes each day, and the break we get in the morning is only ten minutes long, just twice as much as we have to get between our classes. Our lunch has also been cut in half. We don't have a normal Cafeteria. We have what basically amounts to one mall food court restaurant that is greatly understaffed and completely disorganized. Say what you will about Chris Rock, but "If you're gonna give me just thirty minutes for lunch. just hand me a cup of applesauce and a little plastic spoon, 'cause I might as well be in Kindergarten again!" rings true every time I think of it or mention it. Our school day is also now thirty minutes longer, which doesn't make any sense to me. How can they have cut so many things short and ended up with more time?

So, if I seem bitchy (and I know I do), and I lack energy in my writing (I know that, too), and you just don't want to hear about the mundane troubles of my life in a block paragraph with no jokes thrown in (you know you don't), then blame my school. We can't boycott and we can't vandalize. We can't flash mob or organize a movement, but we can get MAD AS HELL ABOUT SHIT.

And now for something completely different:

I fooled you. This actually starts off on a similar note.

This entire week, I've been getting 4-5 hours of sleep every night as a cause of a massive amount of homework. I got even less last night, and when I woke up today, the world had that shimmering, absorbent quality that it gets when you haven't been taking good care of your brain.
 So everything seemed really overwhelming, and by the time I got to school, I was just a walking bundle of nerves.
Then it started raining and thundering, which I was fine with. I walked a shortcut over a field with an umbrella over my head, which I was fine with. Someone with a deep voice yelled "Young lady, you are not being prudent right now!" and I was not so fine with that.

It was Mr. Hude.

Let me preface everything with how much I don't care about this guy, so that you'll realize just exactly how strangely things turned out. I mean it. I don't give a flying fuck about him. I have never formally been introduced to him, I've never taken a class of his, and I never will take a class of his.

Back to the moment:
Yes. He literally said that.

"Well, fine." I thought. "He does have a point." So I walked to where he was, thanked him for warning me, and said I had not realized how close the lightning was. And then he did this:
And that's when I got mad. I thought "I complied with your goddamn request, I was civil because I didn't know you very well, and you're still fucking yelling at me? What the fuck? Even more than that, TAKE ME AWAY? What the hell? That sounds like something you'd say to describe the death of a cat. I feel utterly dehumanized!"
And then, through some tremendous effort of will, I didn't say any of that out loud. I just left, because I don't know him and I don't care.

five minutes later:
One of my friends walked up to me and asked what was wrong. The odd part is, I don't remember being angry or sad, let alone showing it on my face. And when I tried to answer, even though I expected to sound like
I sounded more like
And then I cried for the next hour.

We were having Chapel (my school is parochial), and I sat there and wept silently, like some kind of zealot. I wept because the candles were shiny. I wept because the music was beautiful. The incense smelled good.
The service reminded me of the church my grandmother goes to. We had a new chaplain this year.

At one point, the new guy made a remark in his speech that I have probably heard since the day I was born. "God is in every human being."
Eventually, I got better, but I felt exhausted for the rest of the day. And that's why you need to get plenty of sleep at night.

UPDATE: I would like to amend my earlier statements about Mr. Hude. Senior year, I took a semester of Philosophy under him, and it was delightful. He apparently has some unresolved issues with lightning, though...

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