i guess it doesn't matter too much, because it's not like i have an ardent following of obsessive blog-readers... but i read over my last post about high school, and i feel it was a little unfair.
high school was stupid in some ways, yes. dances, social stuff, all that... it was a little overblown and seemed like a lot bigger deal than it was. a little perspective on prom and being popular would have served me well. but i think i must have been having a moment of bitterness or something when i wrote that last one.
maybe it's because i've subbed at my high school the past two days, but i feel a little more nostalgic and fond of my time here than i had when i wrote last. i've seen a few of my teachers who i really liked... after all, these were the teachers along the way who made me want to be a teacher. i've walked down the same halls and sat in the same classroom (literally, exact same classroom where i took the same class) and i thought, "hmmm. it wasn't so bad." and then i remembered this post.
sure, i was miserable at times. but who isn't? high school is tough, even for kids with a lot of friends. there are a million social, academic, and extracurricular obligations. i was also happy. i loved my english classes, and i thought my math and science teachers were great... even if i didn't always love the subject matter. there were plenty of great moments here, too.
i know that i made it clear that i wasn't actually saying high school was unimportant, but that a lot of the things that high school students think are important aren't... but i don't even know if i think that's true. i think maybe, what's more accurate is to acknowledge that these things are really important to people in high school. and even if i now know that they aren't the beginning and end of my life's happiness (thankfully), that doesn't lessen their importance at that time in my life.
when i was four, it was really important to wear this one outfit that i called the "taco bell" outfit. i don't know why... maybe the color scheme (definitely didn't actually have any tacos on it). anyway, it mattered. i loved that outfit. obviously now, the taco bell outfit doesn't remain the best part of my day, but it doesn't mean it was stupid of me to think it was important then. i was four. it was important.
so the same goes for high school. prom was important. having friends was important. losing weight was important. i got to college and realized that i shouldn't have placed so much emphasis on things. a bad prom doesn't make me less of a person. it just made me an unhappy high school student. but that's normal. and i am thankful for the unhappy times. like i said, i got to read a lot of good books and i developed a unique perspective. (not too unique... the world is filled with people whose happiness increased exponentially after high school).
but i can't say enough how much i appreciate the great teachers i had, my parents' willingness to let me dress the way i did and have the hair i did (my poor dad was so troubled by it), and my good friends who i still have today. high school wasn't a real-life version of she's the man or something, but it was good.
it was important then. and because of that, it's important now.
Friday, May 16, 2014
Monday, March 31, 2014
recent revelations on the unimportance of high school
As a substitute teacher looking for a full forty hours a week, I'll sub for every grade. This is really quite an interesting experience. I had a somewhat unusual educational background, as I was homeschooled through fifth grade, did private Christian school for middle school, and went to public high school. I always appreciated that, as I got to see all the different facets of education.
But because of that, I had no experience in public elementary or middle school. I have no feelings of familiarity when I sub in an elementary or middle school.
Elementary school was fun; me and my two sisters sitting in our office doing schoolwork in A Beka books and complaining about the horrors of Bob Jones. If you were homeschooled, you'll get that.
Middle school was a class of 20 with no room for people to leave me out or to think I was weird. My two best friends are from my days at private school.
High school was different. Whenever I sub for high school, I start remembering everything. It doesn't take too much to guess that I wasn't cut out for public high school. Take one look at pictures of me during this time, and you'll understand why. Increasingly overweight. Short hair straightened into spikes with a swoop of emo bangs across one eye, getting progressively darker until it was pitch-black my junior and senior year. I started high school with a Fall Out Boy tee, some awkward plaid capris, and a pair of Vans.
I was miserable. I wanted to go back to private school with my friends and teachers who knew me and loved my quirky clothes. I had never been in a school with so many people-- my freshman homeroom class had more students than my entire eighth grade class. So I did what I thought I had to do for survival. Kept my head down, barely spoke to anyone, read and reread The Catcher in the Rye (not a particularly helpful move as far as trying to appear more socially well-adjusted), and basically stayed at the back of classrooms, silent and afraid, most of my freshman year.
Though I still had a pretty happening social life from my youth group and my friends from private school, I made no friends my freshman year. Once, near the beginning of the year, a girl came over to watch a movie. But as high school progressed, it became more and more apparent that we were not in the same pool of friends. And that never happened again.
This is not to say people were openly hostile to me very often. I do remember one particularly horrible day, where my health teacher thought it would be a good idea for everyone to write down their height and weight and gender on a piece of paper. Then, he would read our information aloud and tell us our BMI. No names, of course... wouldn't want to embarrass anyone. However, as the only girl over 5'8'' in the class, it was fairly obvious whose height and weight were being read aloud when he said, "For a girl, five foot eleven, weighing 175 pounds..." and the class immediately fell to laughing. He continued on obliviously, reading out my BMI. Then, to my horror, people accused each other of being that person. Using my height and weight as an insult, to which other girls vehemently replied with squeals of, "Yeah, right!" (not to mention that I had written down my weight ten pounds less than it actually was).
I remember staring at my backpack, not sure if blinking would help me not to cry or start me sobbing. I sat still, not breathing, knowing that any move would betray me and I would break into a million pieces. I remember thinking that I would never come back to school again. Of course, I came the next day. On time, silent, sitting at the back of the room, begging God not to let anyone mention that again. Thankfully, they did not.
As high school progressed, it got better. I am simply not cut out to be super unfriendly and standoffish, so I did eventually get to be on good terms with most people at school. Though I never really hung out with anyone outside school, I gradually stopped feeling absolute panic fill my stomach as I trudged toward the school doors. By senior year, I loved my AP Lit class, and didn't mind school at all.
However, there was still a very large part of me that knew I was all wrong for high school. Tall, weird hair, overweight, and strangely dressed. I cared a lot about music and fashion, but not in the right way. I looked at thin, popular girls with long hair and football players for boyfriends and tried my hardest to feel better than them, or at least not care about them. But I didn't. I wanted to be them. And by my senior year, as much as I didn't mind school anymore, I needed to get out. I hadn't totally figured out who I was (still haven't), but I did know that I wasn't the way you're supposed to be in high school. And I was over it.
Looking back, I realize now that high school is stupid. Honestly, I really believe that. Most of the assignments you're given are tedious and unnecessary. Most of the people who make your life miserable are miserable themselves. I had a good family life, but I know that many of my peers had a lot more trouble at home than they ever did at school. Most people's time is spent trying as hard as they can to fit a certain mold. Then feeling fat or ugly or dumb or slow or whatever they are that stops them from being whatever it is they want to be.
Almost everything I thought was a life-changing moment in my life didn't matter at all. Prime example? Dances. Prom was a waste of time. If I'd wanted to stand around listening to lame top 40 hits, I could have done that without buying a dress and sitting with my friend-coerced-into-date for a few hours. Even prom, this night that I knew would finally be perfect... wasn't. I'd ordered a custom-made dress on Ebay, exactly how I'd pictured (emerald green ball gown), and I knew that everyone would finally see that I was pretty.
The dress never came. Not until I'd given up all hope of it arriving and had bought another dress in a last-ditch-thank-goodness-it-was-in-a-size-this-big-effort to still have fun. It arrived the day before prom, more olive than emerald, shoved into a tiny box with no hope of unwrinkling in time for prom the next day.
All of this, all the slow trudges to the bathroom and back (anything to get out of class), the slight coughs used as an excuse to stay home, the hours spent doing and avoiding homework, and the days spent wishing with every piece of my seventeen-year-old self that I was just a little thinner, had "normal" hair, didn't feel the need to be so different--weird--... it wasn't real life. It was just this demented holding tank before college, which still isn't really real life (especially if you live in a dorm-- hello? You don't make your own food, you have half a room to keep clean, and you spend most of the time surrounded by hundreds of people your exact same age).
However, the real life-ness of high school does nothing to detract from its effect on people. Some people had an awesome time in high school. Many of my friends, in fact. (A few of my other private school friends went to public high school, and most of my friends from college were public school kids from elementary through college). Some people were miserable, like me. But even when you can stand outside high school and say, "Wow. That was messed up. People were really mean, petty, and ridiculous. Who people told me I was in high school was never who I was," you cannot take back the effect it had on you.
The effect it had on me was to show me that there are much bigger deals in life than a prom dress that never comes or not having a boyfriend whose jersey you get to wear on game days. But loneliness, fear, jealousy, embarrassment... these things never go away. Despite the fact that I had an amazing experience in college, I still felt all of these things sometimes. Despite the fact that I eventually did grow out my hair and shed a few pounds and actually stop caring if people thought my clothes were weird, I still feel as insecure as I did in high school sometimes.
I always shrug off my crappy time in high school and say that it didn't matter anyway. But I don't think that's exactly true. Most of the things that were a Really Big Deal in high school were stupid, not designed for kids like me, who slipped through the cracks of society's expectations and felt incessantly Not Cool. But they happened. And they shaped me in small ways that I never realized until much later. And, as cheesy as this sounds, I'm actually pretty thankful for how high school went for me. I think I learned a lot about myself, what I wanted out of life, and who I wanted to be during that time. Even though I'm not there... in fact, I'm a long way from there, I don't think I'd be who I am now without those lonely years.
I definitely wouldn't have read as many books. And I'd never take those back. Maybe that sounds antisocial and weird... but if you haven't gotten that vibe from me yet... well. You never will.
Obviously this has gotten long and rambly. So many thoughts on high school, so little cohesion.
All to say that though I view high school as tremendously unimportant, it was also extremely important. Life-changing, even if I didn't realize it until I was safely away from the lunchroom and a few years removed from its walls.
But because of that, I had no experience in public elementary or middle school. I have no feelings of familiarity when I sub in an elementary or middle school.
Elementary school was fun; me and my two sisters sitting in our office doing schoolwork in A Beka books and complaining about the horrors of Bob Jones. If you were homeschooled, you'll get that.
Middle school was a class of 20 with no room for people to leave me out or to think I was weird. My two best friends are from my days at private school.
High school was different. Whenever I sub for high school, I start remembering everything. It doesn't take too much to guess that I wasn't cut out for public high school. Take one look at pictures of me during this time, and you'll understand why. Increasingly overweight. Short hair straightened into spikes with a swoop of emo bangs across one eye, getting progressively darker until it was pitch-black my junior and senior year. I started high school with a Fall Out Boy tee, some awkward plaid capris, and a pair of Vans.
I was miserable. I wanted to go back to private school with my friends and teachers who knew me and loved my quirky clothes. I had never been in a school with so many people-- my freshman homeroom class had more students than my entire eighth grade class. So I did what I thought I had to do for survival. Kept my head down, barely spoke to anyone, read and reread The Catcher in the Rye (not a particularly helpful move as far as trying to appear more socially well-adjusted), and basically stayed at the back of classrooms, silent and afraid, most of my freshman year.
Though I still had a pretty happening social life from my youth group and my friends from private school, I made no friends my freshman year. Once, near the beginning of the year, a girl came over to watch a movie. But as high school progressed, it became more and more apparent that we were not in the same pool of friends. And that never happened again.
This is not to say people were openly hostile to me very often. I do remember one particularly horrible day, where my health teacher thought it would be a good idea for everyone to write down their height and weight and gender on a piece of paper. Then, he would read our information aloud and tell us our BMI. No names, of course... wouldn't want to embarrass anyone. However, as the only girl over 5'8'' in the class, it was fairly obvious whose height and weight were being read aloud when he said, "For a girl, five foot eleven, weighing 175 pounds..." and the class immediately fell to laughing. He continued on obliviously, reading out my BMI. Then, to my horror, people accused each other of being that person. Using my height and weight as an insult, to which other girls vehemently replied with squeals of, "Yeah, right!" (not to mention that I had written down my weight ten pounds less than it actually was).
I remember staring at my backpack, not sure if blinking would help me not to cry or start me sobbing. I sat still, not breathing, knowing that any move would betray me and I would break into a million pieces. I remember thinking that I would never come back to school again. Of course, I came the next day. On time, silent, sitting at the back of the room, begging God not to let anyone mention that again. Thankfully, they did not.
As high school progressed, it got better. I am simply not cut out to be super unfriendly and standoffish, so I did eventually get to be on good terms with most people at school. Though I never really hung out with anyone outside school, I gradually stopped feeling absolute panic fill my stomach as I trudged toward the school doors. By senior year, I loved my AP Lit class, and didn't mind school at all.
However, there was still a very large part of me that knew I was all wrong for high school. Tall, weird hair, overweight, and strangely dressed. I cared a lot about music and fashion, but not in the right way. I looked at thin, popular girls with long hair and football players for boyfriends and tried my hardest to feel better than them, or at least not care about them. But I didn't. I wanted to be them. And by my senior year, as much as I didn't mind school anymore, I needed to get out. I hadn't totally figured out who I was (still haven't), but I did know that I wasn't the way you're supposed to be in high school. And I was over it.
Looking back, I realize now that high school is stupid. Honestly, I really believe that. Most of the assignments you're given are tedious and unnecessary. Most of the people who make your life miserable are miserable themselves. I had a good family life, but I know that many of my peers had a lot more trouble at home than they ever did at school. Most people's time is spent trying as hard as they can to fit a certain mold. Then feeling fat or ugly or dumb or slow or whatever they are that stops them from being whatever it is they want to be.
Almost everything I thought was a life-changing moment in my life didn't matter at all. Prime example? Dances. Prom was a waste of time. If I'd wanted to stand around listening to lame top 40 hits, I could have done that without buying a dress and sitting with my friend-coerced-into-date for a few hours. Even prom, this night that I knew would finally be perfect... wasn't. I'd ordered a custom-made dress on Ebay, exactly how I'd pictured (emerald green ball gown), and I knew that everyone would finally see that I was pretty.
The dress never came. Not until I'd given up all hope of it arriving and had bought another dress in a last-ditch-thank-goodness-it-was-in-a-size-this-big-effort to still have fun. It arrived the day before prom, more olive than emerald, shoved into a tiny box with no hope of unwrinkling in time for prom the next day.
All of this, all the slow trudges to the bathroom and back (anything to get out of class), the slight coughs used as an excuse to stay home, the hours spent doing and avoiding homework, and the days spent wishing with every piece of my seventeen-year-old self that I was just a little thinner, had "normal" hair, didn't feel the need to be so different--weird--... it wasn't real life. It was just this demented holding tank before college, which still isn't really real life (especially if you live in a dorm-- hello? You don't make your own food, you have half a room to keep clean, and you spend most of the time surrounded by hundreds of people your exact same age).
However, the real life-ness of high school does nothing to detract from its effect on people. Some people had an awesome time in high school. Many of my friends, in fact. (A few of my other private school friends went to public high school, and most of my friends from college were public school kids from elementary through college). Some people were miserable, like me. But even when you can stand outside high school and say, "Wow. That was messed up. People were really mean, petty, and ridiculous. Who people told me I was in high school was never who I was," you cannot take back the effect it had on you.
The effect it had on me was to show me that there are much bigger deals in life than a prom dress that never comes or not having a boyfriend whose jersey you get to wear on game days. But loneliness, fear, jealousy, embarrassment... these things never go away. Despite the fact that I had an amazing experience in college, I still felt all of these things sometimes. Despite the fact that I eventually did grow out my hair and shed a few pounds and actually stop caring if people thought my clothes were weird, I still feel as insecure as I did in high school sometimes.
I always shrug off my crappy time in high school and say that it didn't matter anyway. But I don't think that's exactly true. Most of the things that were a Really Big Deal in high school were stupid, not designed for kids like me, who slipped through the cracks of society's expectations and felt incessantly Not Cool. But they happened. And they shaped me in small ways that I never realized until much later. And, as cheesy as this sounds, I'm actually pretty thankful for how high school went for me. I think I learned a lot about myself, what I wanted out of life, and who I wanted to be during that time. Even though I'm not there... in fact, I'm a long way from there, I don't think I'd be who I am now without those lonely years.
I definitely wouldn't have read as many books. And I'd never take those back. Maybe that sounds antisocial and weird... but if you haven't gotten that vibe from me yet... well. You never will.
Obviously this has gotten long and rambly. So many thoughts on high school, so little cohesion.
All to say that though I view high school as tremendously unimportant, it was also extremely important. Life-changing, even if I didn't realize it until I was safely away from the lunchroom and a few years removed from its walls.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
How Social Media is Making Me Want to Change Who I Am
I love social media. I have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, a poetry blog, a random thoughts blog (this one), a book-reading blog, Snapchat, a YouTube channel, and probably a few others that haven't immediately come to mind. And while I thoroughly enjoy most aspects of them, I've noticed a somewhat unsettling side effect they seem to have on me.
It seems to be that I can't stop feeling discontent when I start to scroll through my various social networks.
Especially with Valentine's happening last week, I flipped through picture upon picture upon picture of The Perfect Boyfriend and The Surprise Roses and The Romantic Scavenger Hunt. And each time I saw these things, knowing full well that I was not in the pool of recipients of such awesomeness, I felt a stab of jealousy. I found myself even less happy about my lack of soul mate than usual when reflecting on my additional lack of expensive chocolate and beautiful bouquet.
And this doesn't mean that I was only discontent last week. I often find myself swallowing sighs of resentment as I see an elated I'm Engaged! post or a picture of My Beautiful New Ring. In this No Man's Land of post-college twentysomethingness, everyone is landing dream jobs, getting married, having babies, and living happily ever after.
A few days ago, I was scrolling through the explore section of Instagram. I happened upon an account belonging to one of those girls who has an insanely good body and only puts up pictures of herself being hot. Being hot on the beach. Being hot in her pajamas. Being hot having drinks with friends. Being hot with a puppy. You get the idea. And I felt so unhappy with my own appearance. Every time I see something like this, I'm jealous. "She's probably one of those girls who doesn't even have to try," I think to myself bitterly. Or even if she did have to try really REALLY hard, why does she get to look so hot? I've lost 60 pounds and I still look like a beached whale in a bikini.
So maybe it's time to swear off social media, since all it does is make me see how lame my life is compared to everybody else's.
And then today, as I saw an excited post about something genuinely good happening to someone, I began to examine my own discontentment.
Why am I bitter or resentful or jealous when something good happens to someone else? When has another girl getting flowers meant that something was taken away from me? And whatever happened to being genuinely happy for other people when something awesome happens?
What if I felt happiness for other people every time they had a good thing happen? That would mean that even if I was having a horrible day, I could get on Facebook and see an album about My Dream Trip to Florence and feel happier. Not because anything good happened to me. Just because someone I knew had something good happen to them. And that should make me happy. Because I like other people, and I want their lives to be good and happy and filled with expensive chocolate and beautiful flowers and rings and marriages and babies and fun jobs.
This is not to say that I will immediately begin to feel overwhelming joy when someone else has a great day and I just stepped in a puddle in my new shoes and gained five pounds and am still single and don't have a puppy. But it does mean that I'm going to stop looking at everything through the lens of "why life isn't as nice to me as it is to them" and start looking through "hey, life is cool and people have awesome experiences".
So even if I am not the hot girl on Instagram (which, to be honest, is fair, considering the fact that I just ate a sleeve of Peeps and an entire Totino's pizza), I am still a girl with lots of cool experiences and plenty of selfies to go around. And even if I don't have The Perfect Boyfriend who gave me A Dazzling Bouquet of Sunflowers with a note that says, "These flowers will never compare to you," I will someday (perhaps not exactly like that, but hopefully something cheesy and embarrassing and cute) and I should be happy for people who do.
So yes, social media does make me want to change. But I think that becoming a person who is happy for other people with no agendas is probably a change for the better.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
this is the new year: my increasingly crazy resolutions
another year you made a promise/another chance to turn it all around/and do not wait until tomorrow/embrace the past and you can live for now.
-ian axel, "this is the new year"
a few years ago, this song played during the credits of an MTV show called I Used to Be Fat. i remember watching four or five episodes of the show during christmas break my sophomore year of college. the show followed the lives of teenagers the summer after their senior year of high school, before they went off to college. the teenagers were overweight, and they were given the opportunity to work hard to lose weight and get healthy before starting this new journey; to be new people.
i watched that show, listening to this song, and felt inspired. i myself was overweight, and seeing those success stories was a turning point. i have spent the last 3 years with a different outlook and mindset about my weight, and have successfully lost about 60 pounds.
that new year (2011) was a game changer for me. i stood at the edge of the year, full of possibilities and promise, and i actually accomplished something. (sure, i didn't lose all 60 that year. probably about 25 or 30). i saw that i had the opportunity to do something that i wanted to do, and i did it. it was extremely empowering! and while i still sometimes feel like a fatty and whine about my weight and wish i was thinner, i am healthier and more active than i had been for the rest of my life previous to that year.
for 2012, i gave up drinking soda. i didn't have one sip of soda that entire year. it was a beautiful thing. after a while, ordering iced tea or water at a restaurant wasn't as devastating as it had been at the beginning (this came after kicking a wicked diet coke with lime habit). and it also helped me see that when i had literally said to someone, "i could never ever stop drinking soda," i was wrong. i could, and i did. before, i just hadn't wanted to.
for 2013, i gave up eating meat. i thought that it would be a good exercise in self-control, and i figured it would help me cut down on eating fast food (which, despite some marginally good efforts, had begun to become a habit-- what with late night college study parties, etc.). it was awesome. i hated it and complained loudly and obnoxiously for the first month, and after that, didn't look back at all. sure, bacon smelled good (and i will tell you, fake bacon is NOT worth it. simply not).... but it was overall an extremely satisfying way to stretch myself to the next level of resolutions.
this year, i debated for about a week into the new year. i thought maybe pescetarian, maybe vegan, maybe no refined sugar... couldn't decide. i ate one meal of fish, and decided i didn't want to do pescetarian. after a year of no meat, it was too weird to eat it all of a sudden. so i chose vegan. i started on the 6th, so i guess i'll be vegan until january 6, 2015. if all goes according to plan. so far it hasn't been too bad. just a lot of beans and rice and vegetables.
people are always saying, "why do you need to do this?".... and i guess my answer is that i love the challenge. not to prove to the world i'm awesome, but to prove to myself that i can have that self-control. i generally have very little self-control (shopping, dark chocolate, self-indulgent blog posts), so i like to stretch myself. and, as a perennial dieter/calorie counter/food obsessor, i find that my relationship with food is emotional--too much so. this year, i knew being vegan would cause me to forego many of my favorite go-to sad/happy/stressed/angry/bored foods in favor of a healthier or harder-to-access option, and i liked that idea. i don't want food to be any sort of emotional haven for me-- that was one of the biggest issues for me when i was slowly gaining weight throughout high school.
my family and friends think i'm crazy... because, let's be honest, vegan is kind of crazy. giving up meat was crazy enough for some people... and there are animal byproducts in everything...
but i bet that by the end of this year, i will have figured out a way to have vegan dark chocolate cake and ice cream and all sorts of awesome things. and even if i haven't, i will have exercised some serious self-control. and i like that.
i like to joke that my 2015 resolution will be to stop eating altogether.
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