Self-Discovery in High School

My name is Megan, and I’m a sophomore in high school. All throughout

middle school I heard all these things about high school. People told me it

was a scary place where upperclassman would shove me in lockers, and I’d

get lost all the time. Back then, all of these comments made high school

seem absolutely terrifying. However, now I’m in my second year of high

school and instead of thinking of high school as a scary place, I think of it as

another part of my life that has helped me grow as a person. Here, I have

learned so much about people, life, but most importantly- myself. I believe

high school alone has caused me to discover who I am.

One of the biggest life lessons I have had to learn in life I learned

through high school. I have learned that people always change. Friends have

and still do, come in to my life and leave; as a result, I have become

independent. I have figured out that I can only truly count on myself for

everything, which has been a tough and hard lesson to learn. By not being as

dependent on others, I have not been let down and hurt as much. I have

learned so many things about myself because of being independent and self-

sufficient. I have also learned what I expect from others, but most

importantly, what I look for in a friend. I will never forget something my

principal said during an assembly one time. She said, “I have learned how to

be a good friend because of friends who have done me wrong and hurt me in

the past.” This quote really hit me and stuck with me because high school is

filled with fakeness, betrayal, and deception. I realized that in order to avoid

a lot of pain and drama, I need to discover who I truly am and be content

with it.

There is an immense amount of peer pressure in high school. If you

know your morals and beliefs, then you will not be as tempted to give in and

be persuaded to do things you normally wouldn’t do. This is apart of

discovering who you are. In high school you really discover what you believe

in and what you think is right and wrong. One of my all time favorite quotes

is by Alexander Hamilton. It states, “Those who stand for nothing fall for

anything.” This is extremely true in high school. You really need to know who

you are and what you believe in, that way you will be the person you want to

be.

High School is just a stepping stone that leads into your future. You

learn so many things about who you are and your beliefs; this I believe. An

unknown author backs up my belief by saying, “There’s a big world out

there. Bigger than prom, bigger than high school, and it won’t matter if you

were the prom queen or the quarterback of the football team or the biggest

nerd. Find out who you are and try not to be afraid of it.”

Stress during Junior Year of High School

I believe junior year in high school is the worst year in my entire school

career. Junior year is full of unhealthy competition; the whole game is who is

beating whom. There is the constant buzz of who has the higher class

ranking and which colleges your peers are applying to.

High school has long been covered in popular culture as a time of

classes, sports and over exaggerated adolescent drama. However, these

days junior year is the worst year in high school for many ambitious students

aiming for increasingly selective colleges. These days many students drop an

activity or hobby that they really enjoyed because their schoolwork took too

much time. The average time it takes students to do homework during their

junior year averages from four to five and a half hours of homework a night.

There is not a lot of sleep going on. Sometimes you don’t know whether you

are doing things because you enjoy them or because it looks good on your

college applications. The thing that some people so not realize is that the

pressure students face today is not only from teachers and parents but

mostly from colleges. The things colleges make students do to be accepted

is outrageous. One major cause of all the pressure is the SAT and the ACT.

Many students fear that their SAT or ACT scores are not going to be

good enough to get into certain colleges. I believe that colleges should not

look at the SAT or ACT any more. Some colleges are in fact dropping the

SAT/ACT requirement. There are many bright intelligent students out there

who get all A’s and take advanced placement courses and do extra-curricular

activities but do not excel in their SAT or ACT scores and colleges look right

over them to the student who does not do as well and barely gets by in

school but they get brilliant SAT/ACT scores. The constant pressure of being

better than the student next to you is overwhelming and colleges create that

type of atmosphere to see which student will be able to lie and cheat their

way to the top. I don’t believe that there is a single student out there who

does good honest work to achieve their goals and get into a good college,

someone always cheats or lies about something. Colleges look for the most

absurd things in a student when they apply. Students make up or exaggerate

an extra-curricular activity just to make themselves look better than the next

student. In today’s society I believe that parents, teachers, and colleges put

too much pressure on students during their junior year.

Society needs to lighten up and let students excel at things they are

good at and improve in areas where needed. Each student offers something

special and unique. It is not healthy for students to lie and cheat in school

just to win the game of who is better, and who can get into the best Ivy

League college possible. There are many bright students out there who do

not get accepted to many colleges because the student next to them out-lied

or exaggerated more than they did.

The Power to Forget

I believe in the power to forget.

On December 12, 1969, my world changed forever. My father was

murdered. I was eleven years old.

In the middle of the night I woke to flashing lights from a police car. A

knock at the door, and I heard my mom answer it. Then I heard a man say:

“Marlene, Wil’s been shot.”

See, my dad was a cop. And as happens all too often, he was killed

during a routine procedure, in this case a burglary investigation. They caught

the man who killed my father that same night. He was tried and convicted,

sentenced to die. That sentence was commuted in 1973 by the Supreme

Court, and to this day he is in prison.

I think he is, anyway. I don’t know for sure, because I have tried my

very best to forget him. It was that, or succumb to the hatred that

threatened to define my life.

For a while I tried forgiveness, since that is supposed to be liberating.

When I say “for a while,” I mean for years. But I failed. There are some things

that cannot be forgiven, at least for me.

Instead, I have slowly, and carefully, excised his name from my

memory. Now and then something will happen; I’ll come across a story in the

paper about him being up for parole, or a family friend will ask “whatever

happened to so-and-so,” and I’ll have to start again to forget.

It’s not easy. Much of our culture, much of our popular literature, is

based around the theme of a son avenging the death of his father. The whole

“find the bastard who shot my pa” thing. You may not notice it, but I do. And

every time I hear about another officer down, every time Father’s Day rolls

around on the calendar, I think about my dad. And I think about his death.

And I deny the existence of the man who killed him.

Even now, as I write this, his name tries to emerge, tries to struggle

free from where I have buried it. But it means that I don’t have to live with a

constant, aching anger. It means that I don’t have to be trapped in that

moment of history. It means that I can continue with my life, never forgetting

the love I have for my father, or what it meant for him to die, but not being

possessed by a need for vengeance.

I believe in the power to forget. How many old grudges still fuel the

fires of revenge in this world? How often have more people had to die

because of a fixation on a memory? How much better would things be if we

could just clean the slate, forget the offenses we’ve suffered and the ones

we’ve inflicted, and move on?

Unhardened Hearts

I often joke with my students that the course I teach—English 10—

should be re-titled “Doom and Gloom Literature.” We read some pretty

heavy texts over the course of the year. We discuss the potential for evil

within all of us in Golding’s Lord of the Flies and the dangers of silence in the

face of evil as we read Elie Wiesel’s Night.

Each year, when we begin Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, about an

African-American man who has been accused of a crime he did not commit,

we inevitably have a class-wide discussion about things like prejudice and

stereotypes in our culture, and where we draw the line between harmless

and harmful beliefs. These statements always lead to a fascinating

discussion, but this year, the discussion took on a markedly different tone.

This year, my mostly African-American and Hispanic 10th graders

began reading the book the day after a grand jury decided not to indict white

New York City police officer Daniel Panataleo in the death of Eric Garner, an

African-American man who was placed in a chokehold and died while

resisting arrest. One week earlier, another grand jury had decided not to

indict white police officer Darren Wilson, who shot and killed Michael Brown,

an un-armed African-American teenager in Ferguson, Missouri.

Where in previous years, it had taken a bit of time for my students to

get to a discussion of race, this year, it came up immediately. In one class,

two of my African-American students brought up Michael Brown and Eric

Garner instantly and passionately shared their frustration with both grand

jury decisions. As one boy explained to the class what had happened in both

cases, my normally squirrely students became quiet and pensive. One of

them asked if anyone remembered what had happened to Trayvon Martin in

2012. In another period, a shy girl gave an impassioned, extemporaneous

speech about the existence and prevalence of racism in our country that I

can only compare to Linus’ speech about the true meaning of Christmas in

the Charlie Brown Christmas movie.

When my students reach me, they’re young enough that they still

believe that the world is neatly divided into “good” and “bad,” or “right” and

“wrong.” They’re teetering at the edge of innocence and experience as

they’re starting to realize that sometimes, good people make awful choices,

and sometimes, seemingly hopeless and hard individuals are capable of

kindness. Throughout the year, I try to teach my students to always strive to

do the right thing in spite of how ugly our world sometimes seems.

At the end of To Kill a Mockingbird, the protagonist, Scout, learns that

doing the right thing isn’t necessarily always the easiest thing—but

ultimately, it is our duty to think about things from another person’s point of

view and to stand up for what it is right, even if—especially if—no one else

will. During our discussion, my students arrived at that same conclusion.

That day, I wept on my drive home, my heart impossibly heavy. Aren’t

we supposed to be past these kinds of things as a society? Aren’t we

supposed to be a society founded on equality, fairness, and justice? How is

this still happening?

I became a teacher because I believe in the power of young people to

create a better world. I believe that young people possess unhardened

hearts; I believe that we must do everything we can as adults to prevent our

own hearts from hardening. Why is it that as we grow older, we become

complacent? Why do we become indifferent to the unfairness and the

injustices we witness on a daily basis? I believe that within all of us is a

strong sense of right and wrong, yet oftentimes, we adults are hardened by

our experiences, and we lose the empathy that we felt so easily as children.

I fully recognize how easy it is to look at our world and to become

cynical and to believe that humans are inherently bad. But I go to work every

day, where I work with 15- and 16-year-old young people who are so hopeful

about the future. Things haven’t quite caught up with them yet, as Dolphous

Raymond says in the book. I hope things never will

The Ability to Snort

Out of the many beliefs that I carry with me, there are only a few that I

believe will carry with me forever. I believe in love, I believe in personal

strength, I believe in memories and in good karma. I believe in music,

compassion, and empathy. But most of all I believe in the power of smiles,

giggles, and snorts.

I find truth in Bill Cosby’s quote “You can turn painful situations around

through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can

survive it.” I have been through many difficult stages in my life. I have found

out that I am a rape baby, and I had witnessed my step-father kill himself by

putting a gun in his mouth. The world seemed so disastrous and chaotic. I

felt overwhelmed, down, and completely wanting to shut myself out from

everyday life. But I finally came to the realization that I have the ability to

walk without fear. I learned it’s still okay to smile and laugh. I have made it

through each day with giggles and snorts.

Besides the fact that laughter is great when you’re down, I believe that

humor has the power to make you feel even happier when nothing is wrong.

Some of the best memories I have are laughing hysterically with friends, just

loving life. For some reason running around Wal-Mart and creating mischief

is just icing on the cake. Those times when I was chuckling were the times of

my life.

I believe in Ronald Dahl’s quote “A little nonsense now and then is

relished by the wisest men”. And I believe in Dr. Seuss’s quote “I like

nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells”. Giggling and snorting have taught me

so many things. I came to the idea that life is not so much about succeeding,

but being able to enjoy the fact that you are alive. It’s being able to find

ways to make feel like it’s worth a lot more than what you originally thought

it would be. It’s being able to walk into a store and have grocery cart races in

the empty isles not caring what the rest of the world thinks, and laughing at

yourself that matters. Who doesn’t just love that feeling of lightness that

comes with laughing?

I have learned that laughter is indeed the best medicine. It’s a natural

high that is like no other. Snorting is something that comes so easily. Thank

you, humor, for existing and for helping the world to keep their heads up

with a smile on their face, even if there are tears.

Paying Attention to the Silver Lining

I’m 57. Divorced after 28 years of marriage, I no longer have a house. I

own very little, make a marginal living, and I lost my youngest child to

suicide when he was 21. At my core I am grateful for it all — even my son’s

death. It gave me the lens through which to see everything.

I believe in a silver lining.

I will forever carry my son with me. How can a mother not? This is the

only choice I had: I could either carry him as a bag of rocks or I could live a

life celebrating him. Now let me be honest here: I wailed for months before I

figured out how to trade the rocks for the joy, and found the silver lining

thing. I’m a people person, but Arrick was really a people person. He told me

once, “I talk to everyone I want to talk to.”

“Everyone?” I asked incredulously.

“Well, yeah, I might miss someone I need to know.”

And now, five years later, I’ve embraced my son’s philosophy.

My daughter on the other hand, is more cautious — she shushes me

when she sees I am about to say hello to a strange woman by the subway

stop. “You can’t do that, Mom,” she says half laughing, knowing that I now

see every single encounter as filled with possibilities that can make a

difference in my life; that I am more eager than ever to connect with others.

Waiting for the train, I hear strains of an Ornette Coleman tune. I smile,

and drop a precious five-dollar bill into the open case. My Arrick played the

saxophone. I wish I had his saxophone’s soft leather traveling bag with me,

so I could give it to this man in case he someday finds himself on the way to

a non-street gig. I tell him that. He smiles.

Arrick couldn’t figure out how to make his way, how to live out the rest

of his life. I believe he wanted to. When I call up that beautiful face and those

elegant cocoa-brown fingers running along the sax’s keys, I am always

convinced of it. The youngest of three, Arrick was the smartest, the funniest,

and we all say so.

He was also the darkest, but no one ever saw him as suicide dark. The

why of these choices is often not clear — actually downright murky. I still

don’t know what brought him to suicide. What is clear, however, is that my

son continues: He continues to be part of my story, the family’s story, and

every day now I’m still making connections on his behalf.

And so I smile at the checker in the grocery store, discuss architecture

with the homeless guy who reads every bad-weather day in the library. I tell

the woman my daughter thinks I shouldn’t speak to that I love her fuchsia

hat with the funky feathers, and I thank the saxophone player for the fine

Coleman on a subway platform in wintry New York City.

Arrick’s death made me sit up and pay attention. I lingered on the

edges before, playing it safe, but I’m in the game now. Arrick showed me the

silver lining, and I’m showing it to everyone I meet.

Accomplishing Big Things in Small Pieces

I carry a Rubik's Cube in my backpack. Solving it quickly is a terrific

conversation starter and surprisingly impressive to girls. I've been asked to

solve the cube on the New York City subway, at a track meet in Westchester

and at a café in Paris.

I usually ask people to try it first. They turn the cube over in their

hands, half-heartedly they make a few moves and then sheepishly hand it

back. They don't even know where to begin. That's exactly what it was like

for me to learn how to read. Letters and words were scrambled and out of

sequence. Nothing made sense because I'm dyslexic.

Solving the Rubik's Cube has made me believe that sometimes you

have to take a few steps back to move forward. This was a mirror of my own

life when I had to leave public school after the fourth grade. It's

embarrassing to admit, but I still couldn't consistently spell my full name

correctly.

As a fifth-grader at a new school that specialized in what's called

language-processing disorder, I had to start over. Memorizing symbols for

letters, I learned the pieces of the puzzle of language, the phonemes that

make up words. I spent the next four years learning how to learn and finding

strategies that allowed me to return to my district's high school with the

ability to communicate my ideas and express my intelligence.

It took me four weeks to teach myself to solve the cube — the same

amount of time it took the inventor, Erno Rubik. Now, I can easily solve the

3x3x3, and the the 4x4x4, and the Professor's Cube, the 5x5x5. I discovered

that just before it's solved, a problem can look like a mess, and then

suddenly you can find the solution. I believe that progress comes in

unexpected leaps.

Early in my Rubik's career, I became so frustrated that I took the cube

apart and rebuilt it. I believe that sometimes you have to look deeper and in

unexpected places to find answers. I noticed that I can talk or focus on other

things and still solve the cube. There must be an independent part of my

brain at work, able to process information.

The Rubik's Cube taught me that to accomplish something big, it helps

to break it down into small pieces. I learned that it's important to spend a lot

of time thinking, to try to find connections and patterns. I believe that there

are surprises around the corner. And, that the Rubik's Cube and I, we are

more than the sum of our parts.

Like a difficult text or sometimes like life itself, the Rubik's Cube can be

a frustrating puzzle. So I carry one in my backpack as a reminder that I can

attain my goals, no matter what obstacles I face.

And did I mention that being able to solve the cube is surprisingly

impressive to girls?

Deciding To Live

I believe I am a climber.

Three years ago, a series of medical and personal crises took what was

a clinical depression and made it something much darker.

I thought of it as falling — as jumping — off a bridge on a rainy winter

day: three seconds in the air before I hit the water and plunged deep into the

icy cold, my heavy coat pulling me deeper. And the surface far overhead —

too far away.

This is the question that kept me from making the image a real one.

What if I changed my mind? Jumping into the water, the air in my lungs

would fail me before I could swim back to the living world. I would know for

those last seconds that I did want to live after all, but it would be too late.

I'm not sure why I started climbing. I walked through the door of the

local climbing gym one day on a whim. It was an alien world: strong beautiful

men and women, towering walls under sodium vapor lights, white dust filling

the air. Light instead of dark. Up instead of down. It was in every way the

opposite of what was inside me.

The second time I climbed, I got to a move where I was sure I would

fall. I was 25 feet up on a rope, but I didn't know yet that I could trust it. I

heard my voice say out loud, "I have a choice here: fear or joy." What I

meant was, climb or don't climb, live or die.

In the more than two years since then, I have climbed hundreds of

days — inside and out, sometimes tied to a rope, often not.

I do pay a price here. My body can be so bruised from hitting walls that

people ask me about my home situation. Nine months ago, I broke my leg

and ankle. I healed fast, but the risk remains. Next time I might not.

Climbing requires a coldblooded decision to live. If I am inattentive or

careless, I will fall. Every time I climb at the gym, or rope up for a route

outside, or go bouldering — which is climbing without a rope, and often more

dangerous — I am taking a risk. And I am committing to staying alive.

Now, I believe in climbing, in not jumping. Jumping would have been

easy: Just step over the bridge railing and let go. Climbing is harder, but

worth it. I believe that deciding to live was the right decision.

There's no way to describe the terrible darkness of depression in a way

that nondepressed people can understand. Now, I'm less focused on the

darkness. Instead, I think about the joy I feel in conquering it and the tool I

used.

I am a climber, and I am alive.

The Power of Sleep

I believe in the power of sleep. Pure, deep, easy sleep. Quiet, dark

sleep, that removes you completely from the world. A good night’s sleep.

Most mornings I drag myself out of bed, neither rested nor refreshed,

starting the day already behind. I push my cat away, snap at my husband,

and drive to work in a mildly angry daze. I’m not particularly a morning

person, but it’s not that. It’s that most nights I stay up too late, stalked and

driven by the to-do list that forever hovers before me. My eyes start to

droop; my thoughts begin to wander. My body and the better parts of my

brain signal me in every way possible that it is time to go to bed. But a

nagging voice speaks up, pushes me ever onward, telling me that I have

dishes and paperwork to do and miles to go before I sleep. And so I seldom

go to bed when I should. I stay up too late, and my mornings (and my

husband) suffer.

Oh, but those mornings when I have had enough sleep! Those

mornings following nights in which I have successfully turned off my brain?

Those mornings are gifts. I wake before the alarm and lie in bed, at peace

with the light making its way through my window. My cat nuzzles against

me, and I am happy to return her affection. I look at my husband, and my

heart aches for a moment with love for him. I drive to work, waving other

drivers ahead of me in traffic, preferring to have a couple more seconds of

time out in the beautiful world.

On these days I am happier. I feel more love, more joy, more peace. I

am better at my job. I think more clearly. I am a better wife, a better mother,

a better pet owner. And, I get more done! On these days, the eternal to-do

list is less daunting, more of a challenge than a judgment. With my newfound

energy, I can clean house or wash clothes, I can write, I can grocery shop.

Even better, on these days my well-rested mind and I can tell the to-do list to

go to hell. We are smart enough to know that sometimes the best move is to

lie completely still and just be. These are the days I live for.

I don’t know how or when we stopped believing in sleep, when we

relegated it to a status somewhere between “complete waste of time” and

“something to do when dead,” but it’s time to take back our nights. We need

our sleep. The world would be a better place if we were all less cranky, less

irritable, less exhausted. Even if the dishes aren’t done.

I believe in the power of sleep. It’s right at the top of my to-do list.

Everyone Is Included

I was not the least popular kid in my school, but I was probably in the

bottom third. Hoping to elevate my social position a bit before high school, I

begged my parents for permission to throw an eighth grade graduation

party. To my utter shock and delight, they said yes.

I quickly drafted a list of invitees, including only my two best friends

and fifteen or so of the most popular kids. But when I brought the list to my

mother, she shook her head and explained, “No, you must invite the entire

class or the party is off.” Was she out of her mind? She rarely entertained her

own friends, and now she was essentially forcing me to invite fifty or so

young teens to our home?

Desperate for the party, I agreed to her terms. I spent an entire period

of recess tracking down my classmates to pass out invitations. Perhaps not

surprisingly, one of the last people I found was Maureen. Heavier and more

awkward than most, Maureen typically spent recesses huddled in a corner

trying to avoid the gaze of the other kids.

Maureen watched with apprehension as I approached her, no doubt

fearing some put-down or teasing. I handed her the invitation and said, with

a confident smile on my face, “I hope you can come, too!” I will never forget

the look on her face as she took the invitation from me and offered a shy

smile. At that moment, my mother’s requirement to include everyone

suddenly made perfect sense.

Some twenty-five years later, my own daughter, Sophie, started

preschool in our neighborhood. At the parent meeting, we were informed of a

rigid school rule: “Everyone is included.” For example, kids were not

permitted to exclude other kids from their play, kids could not discuss play

dates that happened outside school hours that did not include everyone in

the class, cubbies could only be used to distribute party invitations if the

whole class was invited, and so forth.

Later, I overheard Sophie imploring her younger sister to let her join in

a game of Barbies by explaining, “Everyone is included, Jessica!” This

poignant incident made me recall my experience learning this mantra, and

made me reflect on how universally this tenet applied to almost every area

of my life.

I throw parties that are too crowded and that require too much

preparation and cleanup. My small kids can get overwhelmed by the number

of children at their birthday parties. The softball team I organize for my office

has too many players. A quick lunch at work with one friend quickly morphs

into a group outing of eight or ten. But these events, with their boisterous

chaos and unpredictability, are more enjoyable to me than many smaller

events or intimate gatherings.

More significantly, in my work as a prosecutor, I believe that the law

applies equally to everyone. The theft of a Ford Escort should be prosecuted

with as much fervor as the theft of an Escalade. The rape of a prostitute

deserves as much attention as the rape of a suburban mom. And the murder

of a drug dealer should be pursued as heartily as the murder of a prominent

public figure.

More broadly, my political and religious beliefs are founded on this

tenet as well. Democracy is premised on the concept of “one person, one

vote.” Jesus taught us to “love your neighbor” and lived this commandment

by loving enemies, tax collectors, prostitutes, foreigners, lepers, sinners, and

even those who would harm him.

The vivid memory of Maureen’s happiness at being included in my

party helps to remind me of the value of this core belief and to apply it even

when it may be difficult to do so. This is what I believe, and it guides me to

this day: everyone is included.