This is it. My final blog post. I complained, shared some knowledge, and shared some interesting thoughts that were wandering around in my head. I don’t wanna dedicate my final blog post to other posts though I wanna dedicate it to these last few years of my life. High school, it wasn’t bad but it also was nowhere near great. I still don’t know whether the pros outweigh the cons as a lot of the time things are absolutely terrible but you’re having fun because you’re spending time with your friends. Let’s get really in-depth with this though, I wanna talk about what I saw and what I think is good and bad about my education over the last 4 years. My Freshman year was not too bad, the school was running at 100% and every teacher was doing what they could to give their students the best education possible. They were bent on creating the most functional adults they could. The drama wasn’t crazy, the work was worth my time. So in short it was a good year for me. My sophomore year, it was one of the best and worst years of my high school career. I had good teachers and I had some really good friends. My classes were mostly decent and they were pretty worth my time. I really can’t complain until the end of the year. Once march hit everyone freaked out over the pandemic and it all fell apart quickly. Junior year was awful, My education felt lazy, my classes were way too long and I was constantly in a state of anxiety. The homework was ridiculous despite a rule being put in place to assign no homework for all classes. Some of the teachers gave up on us completely, not all but a good amount. It felt as if we were getting 10% of the effort that the other classes had gotten. It was a sad year and I wouldn’t repeat it if you wanted me to. My Senior year was super mid. It was so plain and boring that I don’t remember half of it. I couldn’t even tell you what I did 3 months ago. The classes were pretty rough, my LTEC classes basically gave up on me entirely and used us as the pons. We did work for the teacher, not for ourselves. It was all busy work because the teacher was too lazy to actually stand up and teach the class for 20 minutes. The class was terrible and I would never take it, I’m not gonna say what the class was but it was bad. Every other class was pretty good, English, Forensics, Civics, and PE were pretty easy. I never felt dread going into them. Consumer Education was the laziest halfway attempt at a class, the teacher completely gave up and just handed us busy work. The papers we did were redundant and completely pointless. It was a pretty bad class and kinda soured my outlook on school for the year. Anyway, that’s all I have for this blog, I’m done and I’m surely done forever. It was fun while it lasted, by!!

Okay, for starters I am not a huge fan of this book. In fact, I really had a hard time reading it or even finding the will and time to pick it up. I understand what the plot was doing with the mech suits and aliens but the lack of visual or mechanical understanding of these two things makes it so hard to truly grasp the plot. It’s just a very confusing book to read if you’re not analyzing every word you’ll miss something very quickly. I do enjoy the science fiction idea because that’s just my favorite genre by far. I just didn’t understand it in this book. Now, I did appreciate the gender focus as it really shows the inequalities of the time, the early Chinese dynasties. It truly gives way to the current world issues without directly attacking you with them but chooses a passive non-aggressive way of doing it. The critical lenses made no difference for me personally. They actually made it quite a bit harder to read as they distracted me from what I was really supposed to focus on. I can only really read and analyze a book if that’s all I’m doing, once I begin to focus on outside things like note-taking, homework, and other things it makes the words meaningless. The question I have about this is, what is the message the book is getting across through the mention of gender and inequality? How similar is our world to the one seen in the book and how different is it? I feel as if these questions are very viable and are very helpful to the common situations we see now. They can help the understanding of the gender inequality in our world and can possibly assist in the change we need and make the lives and situations better for everyone.

Okay, I’m back complaining about the wonderous world of school. This magical place is full of weird and wacky things that I feel only I have noticed. Let’s start with the wacky crazy people known as the underclassmen. Yes, they are strange…very strange. Now this may offend you but I don’t care at all and you can do nothing to stop me from writing this. It seems every day they come to school with a new “disability”. This seems strange and kinda bad to say right? Heres are my sightings. Number one: They will randomly come to school one day and all they can talk about is their crazy bad Tourettes syndrome. This wouldn’t be a problem had I seen it before or after they bring it up, but it seems to go away days later like a cold or flu type illness. If I’m not mistaken, Tourettes is a neurological problem that cannot be fixed within a few days. Another one they love to use is random dyslexia. What? you can’t spell overnight? I know people with dyslexia and I know it’s very difficult to deal with…the thing is these people don’t bring it up every five seconds and make it part of their personality. Enough with the fake disability stuff. let’s move on to more general things like people’s oversensitivity. They all seem to wanna jump on each other at the smallest things. I once almost got in a fight myself over someone being offended about the way I was sitting…let that sink in. I was sitting the wrong way for their fancy and they wanted to escalate. luckily I de-escalated quickly and made sense of their argument but they were still very angry. It’s the smallest thing they seem to wanna jump on. When I say they, I mean everyone, not just the lower classes. Next thing, but before I go into this I want to profess that it’s not all teachers. A lot of teachers seem to be lazy like they’ve given up on their job. Most teachers do their jobs like they enjoy what they’re doing which is very admirable. Lately, some have made it seem like they just don’t care, lessons are lazy, nothing is learned, classes, feel dreadful. It’s not the job of the student to give the class life. The teacher is the source of fun, the one who makes it enjoyable but it seems that idea has died in many teachers. I will give the entire English Department some credit. They seem to have the idea of lively classes down to a tee. Every class is fun and actually makes me wanna learn. Anyway, I’m done ranting.

First of all the answer to this question is 100% yes. People are so stupid but let’s just focus on the people at school. Why…Why does the freshman class just love to start drama? They do everything in their power to start fights with each other over the dumbest things, and they carry these things for weeks. For example, someone accidentally hits your shoulder in the hallway which causes you to feel a little pain. This happens often and it shouldn’t be a big deal, right? Well not according to the freshmen, they see that as an act of war. They sit with the situation for weeks after it occurs and then just up and cause a fight. It’s like they’re bored and need something violent to fill their time but instead of doing something rational like reading a book, they decide to assault each other. The fighting isn’t the dumbest thing they do, the hallway is a disaster. They will walk on the wrong side, walk into people, try to pull a Star Wars trench maneuver, show way too much affection to each other, and just do downright stupid things. Why do they feel the need to be all up on each other in the hallway? Okay, I get it you have a girlfriend/boyfriend and you want to show affection, but there is a time and a place for that, and the “new hall” isn’t it. The way they walk too is so terrible…straight lines are not their strong suit. They seem to either walk at angles or walk like they just stepped out of the set of The Walking Dead, or Wipe Out after a serious injury. They walk on the wrong side of the hallway, wow! That grinds my gears so much. We had to put lines on the ground to guide them…LINES! Yet, they still don’t follow them. The walking is bad but there is something so much worse. They are way too sensitive. Every little thing gets under their skin, it’s so easy to break their world on accident. You don’t have to say anything remotely offensive and yet they still cry about it. I’m not one to deliberately hurt someone’s feelings but yikes they make me feel like a massive bully. Anyway, that’s enough of that, I will speak on this more in a later post.

My life is great don’t get me wrong…but some things have gone wrong. I’ll try to keep it as positive as possible. It all started about 17 years ago. I was born but I’m not gonna go into to detail on that. My first memory is jumping on the bed with my brother and falling headfirst into a cabinet…I still remember the sound it made. THUMP! I still got the mark to prove it. Funny story huh? guess what, I have more. I used to get hurt a lot as a small child. The number of stupid things I would do was immense. I stood on a toy car about the same height as me (I was 3 years old) and decided to use it as a step stool to get into a tree. Well, it’s on wheels and is not very stable. The car fell out from under me, and after that, I remember nothing. I fell face-first into concrete one time and gained the coolest guy scar from it…under my lower lip. This is a pretty blank memory, all I remember is not crying, and messing with it cause it felt weird. I hit my face more times than I can count, the best one was when I fell 6 feet onto a tree root and cut my lip. My brain does not function as well as most. Okay, positive memory. I went to Disney a while ago and basically had a lot of fun. The best thing about it was the time I went on the Expedition Everest ride. The thing went backwards with no warning which was absolutely terrifying. No one told me that would happen…so basically my family is evil. After that, I took everything they said about the rides with a grain of salt. The best thing about the Everest ride was the incredible view you had from the top. It overlooked the entire Animal Kingdom. It was incredible.

What’s the best way to get in shape? To be completely honest…I have no idea, I just do stuff. Besides not knowing I know what the worst ways are, CROSSFIT! It’s absolutely terrible for your physical well-being and makes your muscles become broken and destroyed. A normal workout is supposed to make you tired and should be done in controlled motions in order to gain more muscular strength. For example: when doing a push-up, go up fast and go down slow. It must be done in a controlled motion for it to be effective at making you stronger. Crossfit also comes with a multitude of health concerns such as rhabdomyolysis, a condition where too much myoglobin gets into the bloodstream from explosive vigorous movement at a constant state. This can lead to kidney failure and even death. The worst thing about the workout type is the push for it in schools and the brainwashing of its communities. People genuinely believe that it works and will benefit you more than hurt you. “CrossFit training is relatively safe compared with more traditional training modalities.” -Researchers of Kennesaw University. They really do love to lie, don’t they? Calisthenics, running, weight lifting…all safer workouts than CrossFit. The most common injuries are the wrist, back, shoulders, and knees. All exercises that could take extreme use to injure in calisthenics type workouts. It’s just plain dangerous, but not only dangerous, boring. The exercise variety is very limited with the same repetitive exercise being done in every session. The trainers are also not qualified to do the job. They are brought in off the street and shown the slightest bit of what to do and told to go ahead. It’s embarrassing for the sport. One last thing, PULL UPS!! How in the world is that allowed? Who honestly thought that was a good way to do it? It’s probably the worst variation I’ve seen and I’ve done wide-angled chin-ups. Try it! you’ll hate it. You’re just swinging like a maniac and getting nothing out of it except the nastiest looking hands I’ve ever seen. I have calluses, they have “rips” The good thing about this is the hand wrap industry is skyrocketing from this cause CrossFit is using them up like candy. I only had to bandage my hands a handful of times and it wasn’t even that bad. In short, CrossFit is not okay and if you thought about doing it, DON’T.

School, it’s become a problem for many students in recent times. It seems many more are failing one or more classes because of the change in attitude and the outdated learning types. The school system has completely strayed from its original purpose of providing a reasonable education for everyone and has now become a place full of politics and useless repetitive information. Math classes are one of the most prominent causes of these problems. half if not more of the things you learn are so obscure that they will not be used in the adult world in most if any cases. The math classes have been twisted to teach you to prepare to be a mathematician, nothing else. They are not based upon several career paths but only one straight linear line. History and current event classes have become so political with the recent climate of these days. Teachers went from caring about their student’s future and teaching them the things to never repeat, to wanting to brainwash their students to think a certain way about a certain type of person. In my experience, I have had a single history class with no politics and it ended early due to covid. Covid is another huge problem as it is a very opinionated topic with many students and teachers becoming almost radical about the topic. I came here to learn something new not hear regurgitated information about an illness I’ve heard thousands of times. The amount of stress put on all students is also ridiculous. WE ARE TEENAGERS. We’ve been forced to become adults so quickly because of schools, they wanna throw us into this world all too fast with the smallest amount of knowledge possible. The work we do on a daily basis is excessive and again repetitive. We know these things, we’ve already heard this a million times. We are put under these expectations to get so much done and it almost feels like the teachers are completely unaware that we have a life after school, we don’t live to serve the school. We all have much more important things to be worried about. Jobs, applying for our future, family, and some of us even have kids ourselves or siblings to take care of. Yes, I know you can’t accommodate everyone for their own particular problems. Oh wait, you can. schools could give us more of a chance to do what we need based on request rather than telling us to deal with it. Schools would rather spend their money on making our walls look nicer than spend money on making students get a better education. It’s sickening to see them drop millions of dollars on outside walls we will rarely get to see rather than using that money to buy new computers, better supplies, more machinery for LTEC, and so much more reasonable things. Depression runs rampant in schools and it’s mostly because of lack of care from the school itself. “The school faculty has much bigger problems to worry about,” says every teacher who loves to gaslight students about their problems. I would argue that depression among the student body is a much bigger issue than a teacher not getting their grades in once cause they had to go to a basketball game for the Bulls. Wish I could do that. PE, a huge issue in our school. The way it operates is you do the same type of lifting every day with no variation of anything. It’s not helping anyone get stronger but is making our stay in one spot all the time. They are more focused on people doing the same exercise rather than people improving. I’ll speak on this later cause I have a lot to say about it.

No, in short, just no. Positivity can be a horrible thing when it is used in excess. Many people like to think it is best to be positive in every situation and seem to put negativity on the back burner. Is it okay to be positive? Well, yeah duh, that’s a simple answer. I love being positive but I also like to see the realistic outcome of every situation. Pessimism is not a good thing and should never be used in excess either as it more or less creates a bad situation out of nothing. The best way of going about life is to find a common middle ground of positivity and negativity (not pessimism) as it makes decision-making more realistic. Example: I have school on Monday. I don’t exactly enjoy going to school but I love seeing my friends and learning new things about life I had never known before. The homework stresses me out a lot and some people can get on my nerves. The good outweighs the bad and seems to blanket the bad. That’s how life should be examined. Look at the good and bad but try to outweigh the bad with good but still acknowledge the bad. You may be asking, what if the situation is bad in general? Well, if it’s all bad then you are out of luck. Just kidding, no your not cause if it’s all bad then you obviously didn’t read everything else. Even in a bad situation some kind of good comes out of it be it long in the future or right at that moment. Example: you broke up with your s/o and you think everything is over for you. You lost the person you thought you’d spend the rest of your life with. The thing is you will find someone new and better who cares a lot more than the one before. The negative you might die from getting a bite on your leg from a wicked venomous spider. Anything can happen which just goes to show how crazy pessimism is sometimes.

Stress, its the feeling of emotional tension. It usually comes from something you’re doing in your daily life be it homework, work, school in general, or a relationship. The question is, does it help? In my personal opinion stress helps no one, not even you. The only thing it does is make the situation seem and feel much larger than it actually is. For example, you are doing some math homework and you don’t seem to understand how the formula works. you have worked for hours and hours to figure this out but it seems to just not click. You begin to become agitated and angry with everything around you. What does that do? nothing, it does nothing, you are only creating a larger problem for the people surrounding you rather than solving your own problem. The stress only stood in the way of you finishing this homework and only made your mind not as clear, in turn, created a focus more on the fact you were angry rather than the task at hand. The only thing it did was make you waste your time. Now, I understand sometimes you can’t avoid stress and that’s not the point of this blog. The whole idea is how to avoid stress when it is not needed.

How do you avoid it? remember you have support systems to help you through the problem. Ask a parent, talk to a counselor, speak to a friend/significant other. All these resources should be willing to help you when you are in need so if you are ever under immense pressure talk it out. Don’t isolate yourself every time something bad comes up. isolation will only force your mind to create scenarios that don’t exist. If you forgot to do your chores your mind will instantly focus on the fact your parents are gonna be mad. remember it hasn’t happened yet, so, how do you know this is gonna happen at all? The fake scenarios mean nothing in the real world as they are FAKE. Avoiding your problems is a huge issue for many people. if you avoid a certain situation it will only create more fear around it, so face it head-on and become more confident in that realm of life. Many people are terrified to stand up and speak in front of large groups of people, so, stand up and do it and stop focusing on the negative outcomes of the situation. The focus on negativity. It’s so much easier to focus on the negative of every situation as it seems more “rational” while in all reality it just makes everything seem worse. If you focus on the positive of most situations you will see how much less stressed out you are. You do have to sugarcoat some things in order to get them done. For example, your work is too much for you but the positive is that your gonna get to go home and feel accomplished when you’re done and the burden of the work will be gone.