The Venting Series

Part Three

She just felt so stressed out. There was, literally no room to do anything more. She barely even had time to breath nowadays. If it wasn't for school, work out and other interests, she could be a really thoroughly happy person. But no. That couldn't be. 

She woke up that day, just in the same manner as she had woken up any other day. Even though her alarm tone made her happy, it didn't convince her to get out of her bed. So she snoozed and snoozed and snoozed. The girl was just about to snooze again (well, she did) but this time she started to get ready to get out of bed. But believe me when I say that she really didn't want to. The time was too much for her to have time for breakfast, so she had to go to school with an empty stomach. Stressing to get to the bus in time was never fun, but it seemed to be a routine by now.

The best part of the morning was the bus ride to school. Well, unless she missed the bus, or her friend missed it and she ended up sitting alone or with a stranger. Sitting alone wasn't that bad, but she was way too shy to sit comfortably next to a stranger. But most times she sat next to her best friend, and they could laugh together, talk together, listen to music together or just be quiet and now that they didn't have to talk to enjoy each other's company. So that was the best part. Then there was school.

The school wasn't really all that bad. It just seemed like it. She had a group of friends in school (not her best friend though, she went to another school) and she liked that group a lot. They were the only reason she even bothered to go to school. They were the chilled out people. Not preppy, snobby or even geeky. They just were her friends and accepted her.

The lessons were mostly too boring to even mention, except for one; philosophy. It was by far the best, and the girl enjoyed it very much. Recently they'd been talking about moral and ethics, and this lesson they were supposed to- one by one- to learn what grade they had received on their last assignment.

The girl was nervous. Really nervous. The thing was, that this girl had studied hard her whole life, and she couldn't handle failure very well. When she was a little girl the teachers used to give diplomas and acknowledge the ones that had improved most throughout the year. Like the kids that were really unfocused in the beginning but went through a change and gotten slightly better. But they never noticed the good girl. Never. And she started to think "What am I possibly to do more to get some attention from the teachers?" and only one thing came to her mind. The last year, before moving to another kind of school, the school gave a scholarship to the students with the highest grade, and this now became her obsession. She would be one of the students that you laugh at because they didn't get the highest grade on an assignment, but she couldn't help it. It was the only way. And I can tell you all that she did it. She got the highest grades and everything, even though it didn't really matter for anything but herself.

So back to philosophy. She didn't feel the same pressure nowadays to get the highest grade, but she still wanted to, because there is nothing worse than feeling that you're not trying enough. Therefore she was really nervous about knowing what grade she got. This mattered too much to her. And she was talking in her head to herself like "don't be disappointed if you don't get the highest or the second highest grade, you did well anyway" but also like "you could've done that so much better. You didn't even put in a real effort." By the time it was her turn to go to the teacher she was so worked up. Then she sat down next to him, and the teacher asked "How do you like this subject so far?" and she answered with "I like it very much, it's really interesting to think about stuff that you would never think about otherwise." Then her grade was to be said.

"Fantastic!" was the first thing the teacher said. The girl could feel all the pressure going away, and a smile started to form on her face. She really couldn't believe it; he thought it was good. The same teacher who always complained that she lacked a tiny detail in order to get the best grade. That teacher thought that her essay was fantastic!

He continued by saying "This is the best thing I've read in years. It's easily read, understandable, and very interesting." She felt like she might explode right then, in the middle of the hallway. He showed her that she managed to get an A, and repeated that her assignment was the best he read in years. He said that she had grown a lot and that she was more mature and better than the years before. Nothing really could contain her excitement.

Walking back into the classroom, she told her friend (since no one else asked) about what the teacher said, and her friend was really happy for her. She knew how much it meant to the girl, and smiled and laughed with her.

That was the best day she had in quite some time, and it didn't really matter that her parents only exclaimed "How good!" when she told them, because for a moment she was happy, and it had been a while since she was genuinely happy.

She still didn't feel like going to school the next day, but she carried more hope that the year wasn't going to be that bad after all.

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A/N 2017:

I am so happy that I wrote about this feedback from my teacher, I honestly still live by that. By the end of the school year I got an award for outstanding philosophical writing, and this just proves that it is all worth it. 

Fay x