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Anticipation Today, as I slouched over my bedroom carpet, paging through an endless heap of college guidebooks and pamphlets, I realized that an entire section of my life would be coming to an end very soon. I have lived in the same house since I was born seventeen years ago, never once venturing out of New England. Every bit of my formal education has taken place in the city's public school system -- from story-time at the Fairview Branch Library up the street to my upcoming senior year at Chicopee comprehensive H igh School. Everything that I have seen and known and experienced has been within this area, and the thought of leaving it for so many other sights and sounds and people excites me. I want to leave, not because I dislike my surroundings, but because I rea lize that there is so much more outside there. In a way, I feel very sheltered and deprived. I've never so much as been on a family vacation that required boarding an airplane or being crammed into a car for over two hours. I don't resent that aspect of my upbringing; I know that I will appreciate traveling so much more since travel was never a privilege growing up. When I deposit my paycheck into my savings account at the little bank down the street I remember walking to with my mother hand-in-hand at age four, I can't even imagine blowing the money on clothes or music or what-have-you, knowing that there is so much to save up for. There is so much I want to do with the two thousand dollars I've struggled to accumulate. I remember being eight or nine years old, and borrowing a book from the library all about Great Britain. And I remember sitting down at the kitchen table while my mother was cooking dinner, and I was going on and on about how I was going to travel to England and maybe move there if it was as pretty as it looked in the photographs ù ("there" at that moment referred to a cozy-looking cottage with a thatched roof and a tulip garden surrounding it). I thrived on photographs like those, pictures that showe d images that I'd never seen in the tiny universe I lived in. Queens and kings still ruled in Europe, zebras and elephants weren't enclosed in cages in Africa, and people had adorably amusing accents in Australia. All of these things intrigued me because it was so different from my world. It was proof to me, as I flipped through page after page of those books, gawking at evidence, that earth contained much more than what I had personally seen. It's overwhelming if you let yourself think about how much y ou've never seen, heard, touched, smelled, experienced ù how much you don't know. I realize it's impossible to ever experience everything, but I want to see as much as I can. I assume there are reasons that everything and everyone was allowed to evolve in to such different societies and cultures, and I want to learn some of the answers. But I don't want to memorize the written historical facts by simply borrowing more books from the library; I want to be there. I want to learn through my five senses, a way of learning that is unlike how I've been conditioned to learn in school. I feel so dead and useless in a classroom; I'm not growing as a person by way of textbooks because memorization is not education. Education, to me, is living. It's not about dates a nd timelines, square roots and line graphing; it's about experiences and revelations. I'm looking forward to the day that I can decide for myself what is worth knowing and which senses I should use to soak up this knowledge. As for now, I will do what I n eed to do to finish what I have left of public schooling. I will cram for tests and quizzes and pass in as many assignments as are required of me. This year will be bearable anyhow because I signed up for as many English-related courses as I could fit int o my schedule, a subject I love because it's encourages expression and communication. But once high school is over, I will learn in a way that actually leaves an impression on my mind, and I will learn by coming to conclusions on my own instead of having them handed to me. This entire essay makes me sound as if I'm planning on packing up the day following graduation after scrimping and saving this whole past year and jumping on a jet to Europe. I do intend to go to college though. If I have my way, I'll be accepted into a small private college that won't interfere with this mindframe. At the present, though, it's incredibly frustrating to know there is so much else out there that I've never been a witness to, so much that I would like to learn for myself without continui ng to feel like the type student I've conformed to since I entered grade school. I think that one more year will give me all the foundation I will have needed in order to take the rest into my own hands. I am eager to do just that.
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[Snarl! of the month] [I Don't Care What You Think] |
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