Tiny Failures

For the Memories at Arroyo High:

Originally Published June 2004, Knights Banner

"Sensory deprivation is an interesting study, don’t you know. It’s when a person is placed in a suit and is then submerged in a tank of water, kept at room temperature. No lights, no sensation, no sounds. The subject is kept in this numbing state for a pretty long time—often for many hours. Without stimuli for this long a person begins to get anxious, feel claustrophobic and eventually goes insane.

Enough about that, though. I’ll move on to high school instead. The place where 720 tediously prolonged days are used to shape character, build moral values and ethics, and create a sense of the world around us; or so I’m told. This is an institution where the regulations of our society have been pounded into my diminutive consciousness ad nauseam. I’ve been subjected to so many speakers who told me this is the critical juncture in my life and everything that bears significance will springboard from the 5000+ hours that I have spent here. I suppose Tiny Tots counts for nothing.

So as I sit back and stare at the world from behind my frappucino glasses tinted in discontent, the thought slowly creeps across my mind that I will no longer have any ironically astounding educational days in this disruptive lesson from a preliminary anthropology course. But before I finally jet out of here, leaving behind a residue of unwanted advice and clouds of nihilistic cynicism, I stand to make a few grievances and informational requests.

How is it that seniors sitting in the gym during STAR testing for eleven hours counts as curriculum time? The same query goes for practicing to walk at graduation for twenty-eight hours (even if one chooses not to participate in such a ceremony). Is it really logical to rely on standardized testing to measure the aptitude of our school and wrap our curriculum around it?

Of course, god forbid that we ever take an extra ten minutes for Food Booths once in a while to celebrate some outside, edible cuisine. So the final decision is that the pledge of allegiance is mandatory? And we’re allowed to wear hats on school campus as long as we buy the merchandise with the school’s emblem stitched on? These are real principles we’re learning.

Do I regret the time that I spent here? Not in slightest way. Do I hate everything that I am walking away with. As much as I would like to say yes, I deny that statement. So I stand on all my securities that have crumbled over four years and try to reconstruct some motivation for the path ahead of me, because I’m going to need all the forward momentum I can get my hands on.

I stop and think, though: Would I do this time over again? Not even if FOX paid me off to do a reality series.

And remember: Shoot for the stars. Even if you miss, you still might blow up the moon."

Another Day, Another Graduation.