School

The location is in the middle of what seems to be nowhere. The fifteen-minute commute is made every day just to sit in a cold, hard, plastic desk that takes to creaking every now and then, of which I have to endure for the next 5 hours. Luckily, I don’t have to be here as long as everyone else. After all, I’m the “big kid” on campus, or so I’m told, but it doesn’t feel like it. I say this because in August after we, the senior class of 2018, have graduated from high school, we will be the freshman again, starting new. But right here and now, in these five hours, I walk to 3 different classes, but they all look the same, the only difference is the teacher or the people in it. There is always the commonalities, which is the desk, accompanied by a laptop and a few dozen graded and ungraded papers, for the teacher. A smartboard. A whiteboard that needs to be cleaned because, well, I can still see the writing on it from months ago. The fluorescent lights (which essentially are designed to make you look bad in pictures). Then the desks used by students and staff to be sat on, slept on, worked on and sometimes left empty because someone was sick.

It’s winter time so that’s probably why they are gone around this season more often, maybe. Maybe they aren’t sick at all, maybe they just need a break from all this school craze going on – the homework, the grades, the finals, the drama, the pressure. But then again, it is fairly easy to get sick this time of year, especially at this school. This school just seems more unsanitary than most, but that’s okay. It just needs some improvement, just like people. But there are just a few more months and I will be gone; and maybe I will miss this place, maybe not. What do I know? Hopefully, I will be onto bigger and better things. For now, though, I am here.

I am here in this countryside for 5 hours, Monday through Friday. My first class of the day just ended at 0850 and the air on this December morning is cold and feels as if it is biting at the pieces of me that are not covered by some item of clothing. I don’t own gloves, my missing piece of clothing – I can’t feel my hands. There’s a ten-minute break that goes until 0900, so I go into my (more favored) teacher’s classroom for three reasons. First, I have the class next, so why not go sit in my seat and just lay back? Second, I feel like I am going to get hypothermia because of the weather, but then again that is an exaggeration. Third, I don’t really talk to anyone here, so my friend is my teacher. I enjoy this particular teacher’s company because they have a type of vibe that is not easy to find. They are easygoing, joyful, content – the kind of person that you just see and they make your day 101% better no matter how lousy it has been. But maybe that’s a negative way of thinking, maybe the day wasn’t lousy at all. After all, my teacher always said our attitudes are formed by us and we choose how to react to the situations around us.

The bell rings and break is over. That’s when the people start flowing in. There are many personalities coming through that one door. There are the quiet ones – head down, headphones in, hands in pockets, one look up to see if there is a substitute teacher – they just want to get to their seat and get this class done with. There are the ones that walk in and say, “Hello” to their friends at their table and to the teacher, the feeble-hearted ones – they can go through the class without complaint because they are surrounded by people they like, this is the class they enjoy. There are the ones who walk in and make a scene every day – the ones who talk loudly (and everyone knows who is talking without even looking at them) – in fact, someone probably even came to your mind. There are others, but they are the ones who just blend in; it is not that they are not significant, it is the mere fact that they, perhaps, do not want to be seen – but sometimes they do want to be seen. They want to be seen so intensely that they become like everyone else – trying to stand out but they end up getting lost in the wave of familiarity because by trying to be different, they are all the same (someone has said this before, though I am not sure who). Then there are people like me, the people who are already in their seat before anyone has entered the classroom except for the instructor, the people hunched over and pretending they are busy as everyone walks in, on their phone texting their friends who aren’t with them right then or simply just sitting in silence with headphones in. The people who speak only when they need to or want to, the people who speak when they feel like they should maybe do some kind of socializing, but I prefer to observe most of the time rather than speak. I people-watch, not in a creepy stalker way, but more in a way that tries to understand people by just watching and listening. Asking myself questions like, “why do they act like that?” or “why do they say those things?”

I think I understand people better than I should sometimes, but I cannot vocalize it because it may be too much, it may be something they don’t even realize about themselves just yet. I know there are things I don’t know about myself, but maybe someone else does. After all, I am only in high school. Only a senior. Only a teenager. Only living life day-to-day. And as far as I know, maybe all of these people who I think are different, are maybe all the same. But I don’t have all the answers, I only have what I know and understand. Before I know it, this class is over.

Now, onto the next one. The longest one. Because every minute that draws closer to me seems to take 120 seconds long rather than 60, double the time. I sit here, not talking to anyone because, in this setting, I am the outsider.  I cannot relate to the people around me, even if I wanted to. It would be like trying to put on a piece of clothing you wore when you were 7, it wouldn’t look good and it sure wouldn’t work out very well and you would find yourself in quite the pickle. I cannot mold to the shape of their world. That is why I sit here in silence; watching, listening, sometimes off in my own world, lost in my own thoughts. And then the physical world comes back to me and here I am, sitting, breathing, blinking – and I️ am aware. I notice myself coming back to this world, but no one probably notices me coming back to it, after all, they aren’t me. They weren’t in my head. They are them, in their own minds.

A sound fills my ears with satisfaction, drawing me out of my thoughts abruptly and it hits me, I can leave this place, my five hours is over. Although it will be the same routine tomorrow, I can – for now – go home.

Now, it’s not that I hate school, not at all. It’s not even the people. It’s just not where I belong and I am just going through the motions to leave this place where I have been for these four years and move onto those bigger and better things. Onto what the world has to show me.

– Ari Miranda, 12.08.2017