What’s high school like? It’s like, wearing clothes that suck to a building that’s falling apart with a bunch of kids with shitty parents, trying to understand complex issues as explained by teachers who barely make minimum wage, storing my shit in a steel box to which my wardens have the keys anyway, with nobody asking me what I want to learn about and teaching me, instead, what the standardized tests require that I know before I go to college, enter lifelong debt, and probably barely make minimum wage as an adult.
I have twitter, I watch the news. I know how fucked everything is. I understand how few options there are. I see my neighbors, teachers, friends’ parents taking codeine and fentanyl for the pains of having to go through the days. What could I possibly have hope for?
That’s how I felt my entire first three years in high school – I had no hope and I didn’t want to do the work to get some. And then that school in Parkland, Florida got shot up and those surviving kids showed me – and the world – what it’s like to work for hope.
It seems really hard, but not impossible. It looks so uncomfortable, but not permanent. And they look joyful in the face of despair. I don’t even face despair and I can barely muster joyful. They gave me something to work towards.
And high school can just exist as a hobby.