They'll Either Hate Me Or Love Me

Last week, I observed special education classes at my old high school. Some students were obviously cognitively challenged, but some were just obnoxious. They may have had mild learning disabilities, but they were there of their own choice. They had ghetto attitudes and talked like anything worth learning had to be learned on the streets. Math and vocabulary weren't worth their time and their teachers were getting paid to babysit.
I remember thinking that. In ninth grade, I was determined to drop out as soon as possible. I started with straight A's, which steadily declined the rest of the year. Learning was pointless and teachers were stupid. I hated being treated like a child and being pent up within concrete walls all day. Who does?
Obviously, I changed my mind.

My dad told me that when kids return home as college students, they're different people. They've lived months on their own, have managed their own lives, taken care of themselves or have nursed their own selves back to health if they haven't, and have worked to get their own rewards in the form of grades (and possibly paychecks for us desperate students) without their mothers' nagging.

Daddy, I've grown up.

In my freshmen year, I've taken on a full schedule of 18 credits each semester and kept two jobs, totaling about 20 hours of work each week.
I've gotten seriously sick with viruses/flues/head colds 8 times so far (I know Donna, the health office nurse, on a first name basis). Those were the times I actually missed my mother's mothering.
I've experimented with every legal form of energy supplement (some of which didn't end so well) but haven't gone a single night without sleep, honestly! Two hours is my record least amount.
I've burned childhood memories in exchange for biology terms.
I've learned to focus on homework when there's a monster in the back of my mind, trying its hardest to eat my concentration.
I've learned what my priorities are and that only God comes before homework and sleep.


But I am more content with my life than I ever have been. I've met professors who have inspired me and have gotten and actual education. I've met people who I wish I knew existed years ago, and know that there are boys who date girls for who they are, not for their bodies (congrats, WU boys!) I am more confident than I ever thought possible because I've discovered things in myself worth admiring. I feel a sense of contentment because I'm in college-a place people aspire to be-achieving degrees that will take me places. I'm on my way.

Those kids are still at home fighting with their parents, who just sent them up to their rooms as if they can be toys put back in a box. They're looking out their prison's window that's too high to jump out of, dreading going to their other prison tomorrow morning, where they think they're wasting their time.
I wish I could kidnap them. I wish I could take them away like a nicer version of the ghost of Christmas Future, and show them what they can do with their lives. I want to show them their potential that is there but hasn't been provoked by the right people; because those people can't be found in Ringgold High School. I went there, I know. It's found in other, better places, that haven’t been seen by their sheltered eyes yet.

What's ironic is that I'm in a better place achieving something so valuable, so I can go back to the hellhole I came from. I'm paying loads of money and working my butt off to go back to the prisons. I'm getting my teacher's certificate so I can teach these pitiable little Hellions who hit on me and threw paper balls at me, so I can show them that they don't have to live in hopelessness. If I achieved decent grades with a small amount of motivation and little interest in what I was learning, then so can they. They need to obey their government’s stupid laws and learn pointless algebra, so they can get a stupid piece of paper that gives them permission to start a life, because they've all got something inside them worth admiring and the capability to change the world.
And I’ll tell them so.