There are many stages in life where the times of boundless joy and glee camouflage the dark dusty corners of imperfect situations. Hence, no situations are perfect, so you need to look at the situation for what it is. I could write of many personal, entwined situations and problems and dramas that lag on the leg of life, yet I will talk about the one that will be present for a long while: school.

School is the reason we wake up early in the morning and the reason we sleep so late, yet I think it holds much more purpose for us. School enables us to have an education, a platform that welcomes us to the world of learning and expanding our knowledge. It gives us the opportunity to learn about many interests and learn about the less important things that serve a huge importance in the world. The little bubble of our 1100 or so people will soon burst. Depending on your social circle and classes, you will only properly interact with 20 people (just a guess) and that is not many.

We are all members of a diverse and unique school of students, which helps increase our knowledge and awareness of different cultures in the world. How could we be so diverse and different if we all follow the same systems, general standards and flow with the same people everyday? We want to grow and develop as human beings, not stress, cram, and pull an all-nighter and then feel the sense of relief for the next three weeks until the next major assignment is due. Due dates and scheduled periods should not be our deadline, we shouldn’t be waiting and counting on the next preferred class, next preferred day or at least the one you can stand.

Wallowing in the valleys of compliance, stress and regrets should not be our main focus, but I feel like it is. We are at a point where our major goal is to simply survive and not strive. That’s the state of a certain part of most high schoolers, then there are the ones who claim to not acknowledge anything, constantly refer to the “good times” and act like they don’t need this. Then there are the ones like me, constantly hopeful of the next assignment or the next sports season, the next musical, too hesitant to make the next move and too afraid to look at the circumstances and take advantage of what I have in front of me. The hopefuls are famous for the phrases, “at least you have,” or “I guess so…” and that is the most un-confident yet reassuring statements ever.

Whichever one you are, or whichever one you aren’t, these are just all fronts people put up to go through life or to get through school. People shouldn’t blame school for all their problems, it’s their own, because they didn’t honor and cherish their experiences and moments. You are given the situation but it’s up to you how you deal with it. School didn’t make you have a bad day, school didn’t make you fail that test, school didn’t make you bored, and school didn’t do anything to you. You are doing that on your test, you got bored in school and you didn’t do anything for the school.

So do something for it, because your actions will be next to your name, not the school. Let’s all do something great that can challenge the little people inside our head. Nearly so, I could talk the talk but never even walk the walk and the hopefulness I possess of situations’ outcomes make me feel like I am a satirical optimist. I constantly believe in the gleeful promises of the future and that things get better, but still fall into the traps of critical, cynical comments of everyone else that make me make a mockery of the way that “should be”. This poses as sheer illusions to me; to say something I mean but don’t truly believe and serves as a tendency for me to wrongly perceive things just because of my blind senses.

So this article may not serve as the platform that we should all walk around and try our best in everything at school and be like,”School, we’re on great terms and I appreciate you!” I think that we should give it our shot, leave the mark we leave and just try it all, because thankfully, it hasn’t knocked out all of my hopefulness and I just hope yours is still there too. It’s a fierce world, know its realities but conform to your own.