FML

Expectations vs. Reality

You know, I've heard it said the high school is the best four years of one's life. After actually experiencing freshman year, I can tell you firsthand that it's not true. It's kinda like a lie that people tell you so you don't drop out of school.

With that in mind, you can imagine the disparity between my expectations and cruel, cruel reality. Honestly, I don't know why I thought high school was going to be like a really fun never ending party, it's actually like work and more work.

If there's one thing life has taught me, it's that you shouldn't let yourself daydream too much sometimes these dreams can be crushed by a cruel, bitter reality. In other words, high school can be a tough place.

With that said, allow me to inform you of the things you may end up encountering during your own journey. First, you would think that when you walk in that you would see a shining, beautiful campus with all these amazing places. In reality, you see a bunch of worn out lockers and oldish classrooms. Not to mention, AC's that look that they were ripped directly out of an abandoned hospital, and computers that have just about as much processing power as the first Mac.

Needless to say, public high schools have some funding problems, among other things. Maybe that's because we spend 96% of the budget on football. I mean, do we really need 4 gyms? We could start selling some memberships with this shit. Personally, I always thought the budget would've been better spent on food that's actually edible instead of the life sized cardboard cutouts of the varsity basketball team.

Now, onto the subject of homework. Say what you will, but once-innocent me was under the impression that it really wouldn't be that bad. Of course, that was before the workload made 3 AM my new bedtime. Now that I was in high school, I was pulling all nighters on a weekly basis.

I gotta say, for a school that constantly stressed the importance of health, the overall environment there was not conducive to good health in the slightest. I mean, do they really expect you to remain happy and unstressed when they give us like 5 tests a week? It's quite a large demand to make when we're being given every reason to be stressed.

Just the thought of high school gives me a headache now. Anyway, let's move on to the first day of school, shall we? That should help to explain my distress.

I tossed and turned in bed, while feeling rather groggy, and struggled to open my eyes as I heard the undying blare of my alarm clock.

"Here we go again. The same old routine of having to wake up early." I thought as I hit the snooze button and put off actually waking up until I heard that gosh-awful alarm go off again.

After 10 minutes of further deliberation, I finally took it upon myself to rise from bed and start getting dressed. Despite the fact that I was actually rather excited about the new school year, I still wasn't a big fan of anything that involved getting up before noon.

"Come on lazybones, breakfast is ready!" yelled my mom. She was actually way more excited about the fact that school was starting up again than anyone should be. Then again, it's not like either of my parents have gone to school in quite a while. My guess was that they had long forgotten about their high school years, which is the only explanation I can come up with for why they were so happy.

"Yeah, I'll be downstairs soon!" I called back as I finished getting dressed. I slowly descended down the staircase and walked to the kitchen. As excited as I may have been for the first day of school, again, I am not a morning person in the slightest.

"Why so tired? You're too young too be tired!" said my dad as he watched me enter the kitchen.

How I managed to fight back the urge to lecture him about his caveman views on health I'll never know. But I guess the important thing is that I managed to do it.

I ate my breakfast, went back upstairs, brushed my teeth, and, as per usual, spent 20+ minutes attempting to tame my very voluminous hair. This was definitely one of the more time-consuming aspects of getting ready, and I winced as I combed through all the knots.

"The bus is gonna be here in 7 minutes! It's time to leave for the bus stop!" yelled my father, with a look of joy on his face as he realized I would soon be shipped off to school and forced to do math.

I, of course, had yet to realize exactly what I was in for. While the process of getting ready for school was indeed a drag, I was anxiously waiting for my first day of high school, wondering what it was really like.

I walked down the street to the bus stop. Everyone else was quiet, with a far off look in their eyes. I decided I ought to keep quiet myself, at least for now. After all, I had just moved to this neighborhood over the summer. But I did have friends at school, and I couldn't wait to see them.

I heard the familiar screech of the bus doors opening, and made my way up the steps to find a seat.

"Oh crap, the bus is packed today!" I thought as I desperately scanned the bus looking for an empty seat.

"Just my luck" I thought. There were no empty seats. I asked if I could sit next to a person I didn't know, and awkwardly shuffled in my space till the bus made it to school.

Once the bus finally rolled to a stop after the many bumps and holes, you could only imagine the excruciating pain I felt as picked myself up off the floor. The view of our school was not like East High, it reminded me more of a jail than a school.

I tried my hardest to mentally prepare myself for 8 hours of torture. At this time I could only remember the sweet summer times of the beach and pool parties. Forcing myself out of the bus I could see the dark crusty sign stating North High looming over me. This sign gave a foreshadowing effect of the mental and physical toil this school was going to cause me.

I trudged through the gates and only smiled at my friends as I walked over to them. My friends were the only reason I actually came back to school, without them I probably wouldn't have even got out of bed this morning.

As I finally reached my friends after the long walk down the hall, I greeted them with as much enthusiasm I could muster which was like literally nothing. Next we started to talk about classes and teachers that we all had, luckily we all had lunch together,and I had gym/P.E. with almost all of them. A loud ringing noise sounded and we all recognized it as the dreaded bell signaling us to go to first period.

"What a great first impression" I thought sarcastically. I was starting to realize the truth about school, but I didn't want to abandon my hopes just yet.

"Well, let's see what first period has to offer" I thought. I'm still not entirely sure if I honestly thought it was worth holding on to any hope at all, or if I thought that out of pure denial. Despite my almost shattered enthusiasm, I managed to have some semblance of a smile as I walked into the room.

What I saw once I entered the classroom made my fleeting happiness that much harder to hold on to.

The walls of the room were covered with chipping, vomit-green paint that looked like it had been there for half a century. Speaking of which, the school was actually even older than that, which explained why every desk looked like it was stolen from the local junkyard. They were falling apart and had countless doodles on them. There was a distinctive, musty aroma in the room, and for a few moments I could only imagine how many health code violations must be present in the school.

My heavy thoughts distracted me from the shrill cry of the bell, which signaled my descent into the hell that was high school.

"Okay, the bell has finally rung. Time for everyone to find a seat" said the teacher unenthusiastically. It seemed like they were just as sad about having to return to this place as the the students. I suppose that should've been a pretty big red flag, but I was still holding onto the shreds of my aspirations, desperate to revive them. I looked in utter despair as my teacher had already written down the homework. It was an essay. We had to write about one period of history that we liked the most.  

  This what we have so far hope u like, we're still not done with this first part. Comment below what you like so far and thank you for reading our book!!!!