Kamikraze

Yes I know this thing is long…but deal with it. Short version: advanced classes suck, and the world isn’t making school any easier for me even though I try hard to kick the habit of laziness. Read on if you want the details.

In all my years of “maintaining a website”, I have never been this busy in my real life before to actually stop caring about it. I’ve stopped doing most of my hobbies (kamikraze included) because of schoolwork, and that has been my priority since day one. However, I have started to gradually care less and less about schoolwork as well.

I can’t quite explain the root of this dilemma since my mind is everywhere…but it’s along the lines of time management problems and laziness as influences. The influential adults in my life were seriously right when they tell me to find friends that give you “good” peer pressure, or actually influence you to succeed in life. Ever since middle school, 99.9% of my friends have been the lazy/procrastinating/BSing types that never cared too much about their education. Not all of them showed outward symptoms of it, but most of these friends either don’t have advanced classes or have extensive amounts of freedom to the point where they’ll do whatever they want, and no one (not even their parents) stops them.

Their “habits” haven’t affected me until this year…when I’m getting into their mindsets. Little by little my parents start to give me freedom in socialization, and of course the first people I go to for social times are my lazy friends. They’re the people that I generally hang out with and that are the closest friends I know. However, they’re pretty much useless for schoolwork help since I’m the person to bail them out for that kind of job. The few people that I know that do care about their grades are the ones that never pick up their phones/get online since they themselves have to do their own work.

Another problem that could contribute to this are the “influential adults” themselves, mainly my parents. Being raised in the 1960’s era of the Philippines, they have no frickin’ clue on the quality of education here in America 2008. [I'd say it's better now, but then again I wasn't around in the '60s.] However, the state that I live in has one of the worst standardized test grades, so my dad expects that I do fairly high in all of my classes. Problem is, he and my mom don’t know how much work I do in my classes. I get assigned 10 pages of notes from the history textbook, some reading evaluation shit in English, and 2 pages of math problems on a daily basis. My parents see this as normal for a “girl with high intellect” still in high school. I’ve explained this problem so many times to them, but they just don’t get it. They kept saying “we were teenagers once and it’s hard to stay focused and blah blah blah…”

Of course I have problems with concentration and forcing myself to do this with the other things I could be doing. What teenager doesn’t? But I’m trying my best. Until I do something really drastic, they don’t see that I can actually do the best that they want me to be. I could kind of see why they put a lot of pressure on me since my 32 year old sister never finished college, and my 20 year old sister failed a class in high school and struggles with college.

Finally…there is my school counselor. In my request of dropping out of physics honors, she has warned me that I might have a slightly lower chance of getting into really good colleges if I take “a regular class”. She wants me to “reach my full potential” and other stuff like that, and got very pissed once I made the switch. I told her that my reason for switching was I had to make things a little bit easier for myself and work on things at slower paces. Besides, most likely I’m headed for a state college/university anyway since the economy is bad (and even more personal reasons), and I don’t really need advanced courses for those types of schools.

Advanced classes are great for a higher education outside of high school, but I seriously have a snail’s pace for finishing most analytical work such as reading, note taking, etc. and when I’m not around a school-type setting I get distracted like no tomorrow. I’m trying to finish all my advanced classes for this year, but I’m not doing any for next year. Currently I am taking small steps such as sleeping early, limited amount of texting, and still shutting off my computer. It’s the big things such as my influences mentioned above that I’ll need a little help with.

Overall, I don’t know whether I need to step up my game, or the world needs to lower its bar so I can jump over it. I’m guessing both, but any kind of advice other than the obvious “gtfo the computer” will work. I sound so weak and helpless in my entry as a tone, but after I type this line in my blog I will start on math homework. =P