This Will Only Hurt A Little

Soooooooo I am working off of 2.5 hours of sleep, which should technically be this huge outrageous hardship. How can I possibly be awake right now with such little sleep?! I've found that it's really not that hard. Slowly, steadily, school has robbed me of more and more of my time. I shouldn't say robbed, because I really do love school. At the same time, though, I feel completely and irrevocably possessed by this place. All I do is wake up, eat, go to school, pass in homework, take tests, receive more homework, eat lunch, endure more pointless busy work, and eventually get in my car and drive home at some point in the afternoon. I do find satisfaction with reliable constants, but this 30-hour-a-week monotony I simply cannot stand anymore. Part of me wants to scream--to my teachers, to my classmates, to no one in particular in a mostly-empty hallway--There is so much more to me than this.

I am a writer. I am an actress. I am a musician. I love nature. I feel compassion and live life with an open heart. I enjoy grocery shopping and burnt Cheez-its, and while maybe these last two are slightly more irrelevant, they're still true, and I still can't get past how frustrated I am with this beautifully-refurbished prison I'm forced to operate within.

Sometimes I wish school was all talk, all learning, all sponge-absorbing knowledge. Instead we have essays, critiques, term papers, debates, projects, presentations, tests, quizzes, quests, tizzles, midyears. Grades. What are grades even, really, when you think about them? Who came UP with these standards? Why can't an F be fantastic and an A be abysmal? Why is 100 the preferred number for everything? Screw nice, neat "percentages," why can't grades be based out of 174? I don't even know what the unit would be there but in any case why not? Why why why why WHY?

Generally I see no dangers in thinking, but this has gotten ridiculous. I am on brain OVERLOAD and relatively soon I'm just going to combust. I'll be sitting in AP Lit, or doodling in Physics, or doing I-don't-even-care-what in Topics, and my head will just explode. From knowledge, from unnecessary facts that contribute nothing to who I am as a person now and who I will be in the future, from constant fear of examinations and time limits and due dates and the dreaded red pen with x's and cross-outs.

Here's the worst part: last weekend I was at a drama rehearsal, and, as the female understudy, was juggling three different scripts and attempting to write down every single stage blocking direction for all 7 female roles. Halfway through the second act, I turned to Dan Gentile and I said, completely unaffected, completely seriously,

"Sometimes I just wish I could go into a coma, a temporary coma, and pass through these horrible weeks and when I wake up, everyone will have been so concerned about my having been in a coma that they will tell me, 'Oh Sam, don't worry about that huge critique you missed! You dont have to make up that test either,' and I will evade all of these exhausting responsibilities and just be in general much happier."

Reading that I'm sure you're probably commenting to yourself about what a horrible thing that is to say, and how insensitive of a person I am for saying it. But sometimes I really do think that having an ON/OFF switch under my control would be the most amazing thing in the world.

I know we come to school to expand our knowledge. But these are the most unbearable growing pains I've ever had to endure.