Last Day of Summer

 Summer is gone. Maybe by technical definitions, summer is still here but... For me, it is gone for good. Today is the fourth of September. The freshmen in my school are there, listening to their teachers talk about what to expect and trying to get used to the behemoth school that they are now a part of. I am home, though, but I won't be home for long.

I used to look forward to the end of summer because I was excited for the start of school. I felt this happy, shimmery feeling about it and I thought about what I was going to wear and how I would look to everyone and things like that. I looked forward to school because I was bored out of my mind in summer. While I am still kind of excited about school, this is no longer the case. Now I miss summer as I feel it fade away from me. Now, I cling to every moment that I have.

"But Tori," so many adults argue, "you're smart. You should like school." I've heard this with the start of school and I just want to strangle them. Smart people don't like school. Sheeple like school (well sheeple that can perform tasks better than their less intelligent fellow sheeple). If they were truly intelligent, I fail to see how they would like something so uniform, narrow and dull. They wouldn't like a system that goes out of its way to make everything as boring and safe as possible, a place that hates controversy and actually facing things for what they were. I learn best with a vast array of books written by people who dare to break barriers and who dare to make learning interesting as well as writing to process what I learn. School, unfortunately, cuts down on this quite significantly. Heck, maybe there are other schools that happen to be more vibrant and full of non-vapid people but I can't see it in my school. As far as I see it, school is a waste of my time.

In summertime, I can control everything. I don't have to read stupid, safe books and I don't have to do stupid assignments I can sleep in whenever I want and I can do whatever I want. I have plenty of time to read, write and explore my intellectual self. I learn and retain far more in the summertime than I ever do during the school year.

Of course, I can't say that school is entirely useless. In terms of its apparent purpose (teaching us useful academic things), it pretty much is at this point. The lessons that I've learned from school are mainly social and emotional. However, I learned quite a bit in school. School has taught me how to deal with stress by pretty much throwing me in it- you know, forcing me how to swim by throwing me in the middle of an ocean. I've also learned how to deal with people and the bullshit social politics they choose to follow and to find people who are like me and hate it just as much as I do. I know how to deal with people and to socialize and if school didn't exist, I wouldn't be nearly as adept at this. However, these aren't very pleasant lessons so, of course, it's kind of stupid to tell me to look forward to returning to it.

I don't hate school. It's not a bad place to me and it's no longer a traumatizing one. I'm not totally freaking out about going back like I was last year. It's just... Going back to school is like having a huge chocolate bar suddenly grabbed from my mouth and have it replaced by tofu. It's not bad and it's not terrible, but it's just incredibly bland and often incredibly stupid. It's hard to have a positive attitude about something I generally see as a waste of time. So soon enough, I'll adjust and I'll make the most of school by surrounding myself with awesome people. But seriously... How can people expect me not to mourn summer when it was incredibly awesome? I don't know how boring and stupid it is (I don't think anything of it at that point because I'm numb) while I'm in it, but it's only when I'm out, that I realize what I'm missing when I go to school every day.

Maybe I can make a petition to spruce school up. I might even get a teacher who makes school a place I want to be in for at least one hour of the day. I doubt it, though.  I'll have to go to school and deal with it, waiting until it ends for the fun to actually start (whether at home or in totally cool clubs). On the bright side, I happen to know that school will be fun the first couple of days and then only gradually get worse. I guess I need to focus on not being sad that it's over, but happy that it even happened. It will take a while to get over, though.

Me getting used to school tomorrow