AP English has made high school worth it

I cannot believe I am already at my seventh blog, it feels like only the other day we started this assignment. AP English has honestly had an enormous impact on my life. This class has removed every single “white man bias” I’ve had growing up, and I love being able to see the world from other perspectives. I wasn’t biased negatively by what my parents taught me, they raised me with loving Christian values. I believe what gave me a negative view of the world was junior high and early high school. I only looked at problems through my eyes: young white man eyes. Seeing how people treated me different for my skin color and gender made me extremely defensive, even hostile a few times. Anything I didn’t understand or got blamed for I would be severely against. Gays? Didn’t understand so I was against them. Immigrants? Didn’t understand why they wanted to be here so bad. I still cared for everything and everyone, it’s just that I couldn’t grasp how people could have ideologies so different than mine. It was an extremely dark time in my life, and I thought I was in the right. Sure once I reached junior year those ideas died down and I calmed down, it wasn’t until this class that my eyes opened. I learned about perspective, and since then have tried looking at every single perspective in anything and everything around me.

This thought came about on April 22^nd, in class. Mrs. Caffey asked us what kind of good life lessoned we learned in high school so we could add it to a slam poem, and the entire class (of like eight people) didn’t have anything to say; we were all sitting around one table, speechless. The only thing positive that came to my mind was how AP English taught me how to care for people, a lot more than I already did. I was able to think of the plethora of lessons I learned before going into junior high, but after that everything just got kind of sad about how much growing up has stopped me from learning “nice” things. The life lessons I’ve learned recently have been things like “small circles of friends are easier to manage” and “Don’t trust everyone you meet”. Of course this always ties into “Why can’t everyone just get along/ leave each other alone?” but that’s a topic for another blog. The main thing I’m trying to get across right now is, why did growing up only let me learn depressing lessons? Did I do something wrong with how I grew up? Should I have done more? I can’t fully answer these questions until I have a mid-life crisis in about thirty years, but I’m puzzled at how everyone in the class was as stumped as I was. Maybe it was the weather making everyone depressed or something, but not a single soul in that room could think of a positive lesson learned in high school. The way how everyone’s attitude toned down, as if they too had thoughts of how their “dark times in life” were. This once again triggered my perspective mode, we all have had bad times. But we have all made it this far, and all of us will make it past these dark times and learn positive lessons in the future, I guarantee it.

Challenges/ Priorities

If you kept up with my blogs, by this point you should know my main hobby is video games. I know it’s not as special as rock climbing or anything, but it keeps me going, ok? I recently bought a new game and, oh boy, it is HARD. This game has made me feel every emotion on the spectrum. I’ve been so happy that I have a constant smile on my face, I’ve been so sad my eyes have teared up a bit. The main emotion I’ve felt is ANGER. Whenever I die on it I spiral into a rage so fierce that I wonder why I paid sixty dollars for that piece of junk. But through the anger, I’ve calmed myself and carried myself through it. Finishing it today made me so ecstatic that I almost danced into the living room to tell my brother. When I told him, he gave me the same look my dad always gives me when he says, “If you put half as much effort you put into games as you did with school, you’d have all A’s.” Whenever he says this, I usually ignore him and keep playing, but today I wondered the same thing.

I put so much effort into this game that I’m actually shocked I was able to beat it. This made me think, “Why do I quit doing school work when it gets this hard? In this game I pushed and pushed with “blood and sweat”, why can’t I do that in real life?” That brings up the thought of the “instant gratification monkey”. There’s a great TED talk about it right here: http://tinyurl.com/hyek889. Basically the talk talks about how we do things that make us feel good right away. Instead of doing e2020 like I planned to this weekend, I played that game. Why? Because it made me feel like I accomplished something instead of feeling like I’m getting nowhere on e2020. Sure the game was a lot more difficult than sitting down and typing for hours, but when I actually defeated a boss or online player I felt amazing that I completed something so challenging; and it felt GREAT.

Most people associate this game (If you’re curious, it’s called Dark Souls 3, a fantasy game like I said two posts ago) with being extremely difficult, and that’s why I think I like it so much. I hate simple games where you click one button and a ball shoots or some other crap like that. I love games where you have to use every sense to know what to do. Ones where you have to keep track of what just happened while you prepare for what’s coming up. I got a little off topic right there, I felt like I needed to explain my addiction/ passion a little better. Today shows me how easy my plans can get thrown off, just for a quick fix of faux-adrenaline. It shows me that even though I feel amazing right now, tomorrow I’m probably going to be really bummed I didn’t finish that e2020. Like my last blog said, gotta get my priorities straight.  

Motivation

I can officially say that “Senioritis” is hitting me with full affect. In my earlier years of high school, I was just lazy with my homework, slacking off until the last possible moment on my assignments was a complete norm, while was caught up in almost everything else. Nowadays there is a list of things piling up, and I’m almost drowning in the responsibilities I’m delaying. Don’t take my self-acknowledged laziness as a sign that I don’t work hard on what I do, I usually give it at least eighty percent effort. It’s just that as of recently I am noticing all of my duties in a singular view: seeing all of them at once.

What really set in my mind that I’m slacking was my senior pictures. I wasn’t really too thrilled about them, but I knew my mom really cared for them. We had a photographer take pics of my brother and I around the train station and the Heward House, and when my mother finally got copies of the photos I noticed one thing, I’ve gotten a lot bigger than I thought. Now, I could list every reason why I don’t have time to work out, run, or eat healthy, but I know the excuses get you nowhere in life. I haven’t gone to a gym since sophomore year, and I really enjoy my Coca Cola. You may also think, “Well golly gee Frankie, don’t you have a mirror?” Yes I do. Every time before I take a shower I take a look at myself in my bathroom mirror, not out of narcissism, but to look at how much acne I have. Not in two years have I noticed that I have gained that much weight. I noticed that I have gained weight, but I never thought that much of it.

Another thing I’ve set aside are my senior duties. I haven’t signed up for any scholarships, haven’t finished FAFSA, and I haven’t attended many games or dances, anything senior-ish. I do have a valid excuse on this one with NAVIT taking up half my day but, still. I feel like I have completely skipped my high school experience with the amount of college work I do. I’m not entirely sad that I’m missing out on these things, I’ve got a plan set up to where I won’t need scholarships and I’ve always been a sort of introvert, but  I feel like the feeling of being a senior never truly kicked in for me. I still feel like I am a lower class-man: having little responsibilities, but that just isn’t the case anymore.

With all of this stuff being said, it becomes clear that I lack the proper motivation, the proper drive to get things done. I’m glad to say that I am starting to work on all my failings now, starting this very day; not because I want to, but because I can. Not everyone in this world has the opportunities I am gifted with, I might as well make use of them. Even just staying in shape and going out of my way to attend events can be a starter for the larger picture.