I never expected to take summer school, only summer delta. Health and speech, easy as pie. No muss, no fuss, just two and a half weeks of morning computer work. I would have to spend the latter half of my day with my mom at work after she picked me up from school, but I would have my charger and my laptop to carry me on until the evening when she took me home, which was sadly not true of the first day. She got a phone call from the school. I was right there in her office when it happened. She was shocked, and I was paranoid about whatever it could be, despite my skill at hiding it. As an actor and a writer, I find it remarkably easy to hide the pain. Apparently I had failed not only physics, but also English, and would have to take summer school.
Summer school, on top of summer delta, four classes, two and a half weeks. It slammed into me like a freight train right there in that chair. I was still on my phone, desperately trying to ignore the feeling of my heart sinking like a rock into my chest. This occurred for me over the period of an hour or two. My eyes had already been bothering me due to the allergies, and I at least had an excuse to cry, had I done so. Summer delta was fucking easy, and I was still relaxed, but Physics and English on top of that? Bullshit. I can't do that. Would any adult tolerate that kind of workload? Especially when your english teacher has a "no electronics" policy during certain times of the class, so I can't even work on my summer delta during English. When can I work on it, then? Physics? Of course I can, but after school? I get out of summer school at seven, my day much longer than any during the school year. When I get home, I barely have time to relax, barely time to eat dinner, watch an episode of Orphan Black, and then take a shower.
This foreboding in my chest tore through me, and my mother was rightfully aggravated, too. She had to drive me to school that evening and go out of her way to sign me up for summer school, not five hours after the phone call of death had been made. We had to go up to my school counselor (who really didn't do much over the year) and my mother had to show the signs of stress in her eyes in the form of near-tears that I had a legit reason for failing two classes. I was almost there with her, but it hurt like hell to even keep my eyes open. In the end we got a reduction in payment so that we only had to pay 100 bucks instead of 300 or some shit like that, but it turns my blood to fire at the thought that that 200 bucks saved was all both of us had gotten for our pain and suffering. Now I have to work a 13 hour school day for two and a half weeks in order to finish four fucking classes, one of which is beyond me. I knew exactly what we were learning in English, I understood it, I could write it, I just lacked the mental facility to do the work, and for that, they put me with a bunch of ghetto kids who take 10 minutes to read a page out of a book. I get some people are slow readers, but I'm far more than they are. I'm not saying I deserve more, but I at least deserve to make up the class I took, not 6th grade English, with it's definitions like "foreshadowing", "protagonist", "nonfiction", to name a few. I'm a writer, these words are second nature to me, I define them by themselves, and use them to define other words. These words are new to these other kids, who ought to be in some special class where they develop a reading level comparable to a high school one. Instead, they're here, attending, participating, and being written off as having learned the material. What a joy this public school system is.
I don't mean to badmouth other kids, I'm sure they're nice, in their own way, but a student is no longer a student when they no longer desire to learn. Having taken a break in an hour of traffic in my mom's car, I can easily say I'm stressed. There's definitely a lack of homework for both classes, which is thankful. The school year was too full of homework, and getting home at nearly 8 in the evening thus means there would be riots should homework be assigned. My own would be passive aggressive, but there could be some vehement disagreement by others. As I said, barely enough time to watch a single episode of Orphan Black all the way through, especially since the atmosphere of the show causes one to take frequent breaks, as one normally does when one gets the feeling of a character in a movie or TV show when they're doing something they shouldn't. Orphan Black is filled with moments like these, make no mistake.
And it's a moment like this where, despite the music, I've completely lost my train of thought. I usually listen to the same music, in this case Blackheart, in order to remember what the gist of it is. It's like chewing a flavor of gum while you study, then chew the same flavor during your final. The association allows you to remember what you studied. This is supposed to be an essay, but I wrote it as a blog post, why? Because one way or another, I reflect on a personal experience. I may seem mean, judgmental, but aren't we all? Aren't you? My blog posts are more than just words on a screen, they're a reflection of me, and who isn't judgmental or mean some of the time, even in their own head?
We are all memories, and this is one of them, this is several, several where I felt pain, anger, sadness, depression, and most importantly, angst, the #1 emotion in a teenager's life. This is more than just an essay, this is a fragment of me, a horcrux meant to preserve me and keep me immortal, this one blog post, capturing my brainwaves and displaying them for all to see on the internet forever. On the internet, we are immortal. We will always be here. No matter how much of an essay this isn't, this is more.
This is me.
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