Where am I?

I don't know who I'm writing to. I guess anyone who wants to help me. Anyone who reads this and relates and is equally as confused.

It's only been the first couple of months of junior year, and I've already learned so much. I've learned that school is hard. That I'm scared of failing, but I'm becoming less and less of an over achiever. Homework doesn't matter anymore, unless it's graded or there's a test on it, which there always is. At times it's just laughable when i get a 20/40 on a quiz. Except the times that I just sit there and cry because I feel so stupid that I don't know how to even start finding the angular velocity of a wagon wheel. 

More than radians are changing .I'm getting my license, and eventually a car, and more responsibility than I know what to do with. I have more homework than any sane person could do. I'm switching camps. All of the groups that I'm in are either too impermanent or too young to have an influence on the fact that it feels like I'm all alone. My friends went to college. My parents are so sick of me being stressed that its not even worth it to start a conversation, because on top of all that I have to do, I have to try to raise their expectations of me.  My friends are either getting more stressed over school, or escaping the stress by drinking. 

I always felt so much pride in the fact that I don't drink. I've never had a drink, I've never smoked pot. for the first time, I actually feel like I'm missing something. Everyone else does that stuff, it seems like. Everyone just goes to parties and gets wasted and hooks up and that's that. There's no shame, and no one gets any more deathly ill than puking, and thats only if you cant hold your liquor. No one seems to have any problems. They are happy, they have best friends and boyfriends and girlfriends and life is good. There's always the occasional drama that happens, which I guess is the only downside. But someone told me that you don't have to act stupid when you're drunk, people just do. Of course, I don't know how you can tell if you're being stupid if you're drunk. 

Are you supposed to drink? Is drinking supposed to be the way you handle stress and life, at age 16?  I guess now writing it down, it seems so....just...stupid to think drinking is ok but when everyone around you that you grew up with and trusted is smoking and drinking, it just seems like whats supposed to happen. You're supposed to go to parties and drink instead of doing homework and working hard and getting stressed out over which standardized test would be better for you. The world is supposed to be open, and everyone is supposed to be different and free to live their lives how they choose. But the options are either being stressed over school or having fun drinking. Doesn't anyone just...I don't know...go on adventures through the woods, or play man hunt, or go to a football game anymore? Does everything anyone does have to have drugs and pot and beer involved? Is that what we're supposed to do now?

I want to have a good job, and go to a good college, but I want  to have friends and a fun time while I'm still in high school. I hope I don't have to break my straightedge streak to do it. I don't want to let myself down. I won't let myself down.

Sincerly,
Me

Dear Me

Goals of the Day:

**Complete a Gold Award Project: a cultural awareness play (?) to be presented by the FOR club at FreshFest

**Go to Brown University, double concentrate in Performance Studies and Cognitive Neuroscience

**Get a talent agent and be in shows or a company

**Go back to school for a real job.

**Finish the history notes that are due tomorrow in the next half hour, plus an hour and a half in the morning...yeah right.

Dear Rachel

Hello, my name is Jessica Rose, and I have accepted your challenge.

The day began at Masuk High School as it normally does. Groups of friends congregated in the library and cafeteria, then students filed off to classes at the sound of the bell without a second thought. We sat and rolled our eyes as the teacher led a discussion, then went to our advisory groups.

I received a copy of your essay yesterday, and I read it and was touched and impressed by the higher-level analysis and positive thinking that you incorporated into it. I like writing, just like you did. I had heard great things about the assembly from the woman who organized it.  I put the paper away and while I waited excitedly for the assembly, I believed it to be pointless; these lectures always change people for a day, if they change people at all, and then it is back to the same old bitching and moaning. So today when we were asked to write our own essays I took advantage of the opportunity, because no one could change what I wrote. I wrote from the heart, even though my peers were giving me strange stares because I was the only one actually subjecting myself to the "stupid assignment." We went to breakfast, then traced our hands but didn't know why. We proceeded into the auditorium with our friends, without any preparation for what we were about to experience.

I have never cried in a movie theater. Books just don't bring me to tears. If you cry during a television show, you won't be prepared for the next day's discussion. And somehow by the end of this assembly I was crying. Your story, your brother's story, moved me to waterworks. You discovered the importance of human interaction and made it a goal to perfect it in yourself. You treated everyone with equal kindness and respect, and made other's recognize their own self-worth. The story of how you made a mentally handicapped boy's life worth living with a hug and a high-five was absolutely incredible. Your family must be so proud. 

Today, Masuk High School became a family. We were all brought together to this revealing, eye-opening experience and perhaps proved that we weren't all crazy. All of our wishes for a better world that were closed in the back of our subconscious minds came forward. Thank you for giving us permission to think them. The auditorium became our sanctuary, where we all gained a connection with each other and with our school that we will have for the rest of our lives. People were able to share personal aspects of their lives with a group of people that may not have known their name. A huge group of student leaders, sports team captains, class officers, theater kids, and psychology students created what the spokesman called an F.O.R. Army. We are your friends, and we are friends of each other and of our community. We all have Facebook statuses declaring our love for each other and we don't sound insane. 

If any school can succeed in completing your challenge, it is Masuk High School. I accepted Rachel's Challenge.