Please ignore the giant elephant in the room.....

So, I found the roughneck article very interesting. I thought it was the PERFECT portrayal of our school. It made me think back to the school newspaper articles and the book the security guard wrote. We love to portray ourselves as the perfect school. I think, our school would like us to go to school, take 47 AP tests, go home, do our homework all night long and go to bed. On weekends we like to spend our time doing extracurriculars, community service work and studying for our tests. In reality, we're still a bunch of teenagers (as much as that sounds like a cop out) and we're not perfect. I think that's why the administration freaked out when the above mentioned publications came out. Now, the book had very little truth (or correctly spelled words) out of my four years I have never seen kids doing coke in the bathroom or blatantly groping one another (ok not like he explained it haha). But still, it was a dent in our perfect reputation. Same with the newspaper articles, nobody's pregnant, we don't drink, we don't steal. Yes, yes some of us do. But the thing is we can kinda get away with it because of who we are. We are upper- middle class, suburban kids that go to a good school. We can be a little sneaky, we can sweep things under the rug because of who we are. On some levels we can be worse because of all the opportunities and money and parents as lawyers. Our school, as a whole, is a bunch a of saints.

*I would like to note that not everyone at school is a "saint", that is not everyone drinks or does drug or engage in promiscuous activities in their free time. I was just saying there is a population of kids that do and that our school does not like to recognized their behavior.

Me: "I'm 18!" Mom: "It's your bedtime!"

I've always thought having a set age for things was weird. I mean I get that some people aren't mature enough to handle something before a certain age. But really what's different about me between Nov.3 at 11:59 and Nov. 4th 12:00? Nothing really, I don't wake up on my birthday and feel more responsible or look older- in fact I don't feel anything new really. So how come on Nov. 4th I could stay out as late as I wanted on and not on Nov. 3rd? I just don't get it. Ok, let me take that back, I get it. This is America, the land of fairness and equality. Sure I was probably responsible enough to drive a car when I was 15, but Joe Shmoe sitting next to me was FOR SURE not. So who gets to decide how responsible I am? And that's where the gov comes in. And it's helpful, don't get me wrong. But how am I supposed to learn how to handle my new responsibilities when just a minute ago, they weren't granted to me? There are ways you can get around the law, ways you can practice before it's legal. That's why we need to log a bajillion hours behind the wheel with a parent before we can get our license. But I feel there would be a lot less teen accidents if we could've built up to driving on our own with cellphones, friends and other distractions. Because once you have that little piece of plastic, you're free, you're parent won't be there to tell you to slow down at that yellow light, to focus on the road and not the people on the sidewalk. Because of these rules, I need to become responsible overnight, I need to learn how to make good decisions at midnight. I see how our rules solve problems, but I see how strict we are with following and realize we need to ease everyone into maturity, I think we could solve a lot of problems.

Low Fashion

One of the things Sal brought up in his blog (and the girl in the Strength to resist video) talked about how you dress. Is it how you want to dress or how you feel you should dress? I totally get what they're saying. When I get up in the morning all I want to wear are sweatshirts and sweatpants. But I rarely ever do. I never wear sweatpants, I don't know why, I just don't like to wear sweatpants in public. And when I do wear a sweatshirt, I tend to regret it. I see what everyone else is wearing and immediatly regretted wearing it- why hadn't I taken the time to look put together??

But I don't know, maybe it's me maturing, or maybe it's seniroitis, but I've started to just do what I want. I don't really look around and think about how messy I look, or how people are thinking of the way I'm dressed or sitting or how my hair looks. I just doing what I want, when I want and how I want. Now, I may wear a tshirt four days a week and maybe even *gasp* sweatpants (that's right kids I wore sweatpants TWICE this week) and I'm comfortable, I like it.

I'm not saying I don't care, because I do. But I think circumstances have a lot to do with it. Now, I just don't care anymore. We're getting down to the craziest and most hectic month of the year, and now that we're seniors and we all almost know where we're going but we still have APs to do well on. Well motivation is in short supply. But I'm sure after APs I'll go back to caring. It all just depends.