Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Update: The Slow Death of Sarah's Soul

Hey, kids! Guess what time of year it is up here in public-school land! That's right, it's Suicide Prevention Week!

And you know, it's ironic that I go to a Top 100 school, yet they were dumb enough to give seniors their class rank during this very week. I'm trying hard to imagine how the kid who got 289/289 feels when he sees all those "Choose Life!" posters (that are followed by ones reading "Choose Family!", then "Career" and "a Fucking Big Television"... I'll let Valentina finish that off). I don't think he or she will feel so accustomed to do so.

The juxtaposition of these two events makes me angry. I'm convinced they've done this on purpose. Something about it feels so menacing, so taunting. It almost feels as if the posters exist to give all the insecure students the following feeling: "What's worse than how you feel right now? Well, you could be dead." Great.

But what's the use? At this rate, they can't prevent it. All this stress and contortion inside my body may kill me before I get the chance to graduate. My body killing me? I call that suicide. And at a school like mine, everyone else is killing themselves too. Good going, Suicide Prevention campaign. It's not our fault that school is breaking us down.

If you can't guess, senior year is making me goth or something. I should just go buy some black paint for my walls and blast some Bauhaus. It'd be better than listening to as much pop as I do. After all, it took me a while to figure out that neither Kokomo nor La Isla Bonita are real (...yet. My faith in humanity remains).
I guess I'm just trying to say that I find so much error in class rank. It is yet another excuse for growing individuals to be evaluated through comparing them to their peers.
In other words, high school sucks.

1 comments:

Valentina said...

HAHA that's so amazing. Really funny in an ironic and dark kind of way. It's ok though, my class ranking was shit and it all worked out for me. Don't worry, no one knows how those bastard admissions officers pick their students, personally I think it's all arbitrary and ridiculous. Good luck with the school though (I figured it out, yay I'm smart!! kay fine not really) I really hope you get in! Don't stress out... it'll all be over reeeeaal soon.

And yes, I totally finished the entire monologue in my head pretty much as soon as I read that sentence. I'm a cool kid. Not.

 

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