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How to Survive High School

Welcome to Urbana High School, the gateway to your future. Or the temporary prison. Regardless of how you currently feel, the majority of students will not like school for one reason or another. They will make friends, loose friends, and experiance a torent of life lessons in but a few short years. In this paper, I hope to help you better understand whats about to happen to you. One important thing I pray that you will understand first is that "There is an exception to every rule, including this one!". Here's an example of that rule: this very paper. I went through school as neutral as one could be. C+ average, no in school activities, quiet one in the class. I know that you are more than likely not going to take my path. Therefore, this paper may be confusing to you, and thus prove to be ineffective. But once you reach Senior year, and if you happen to remember this paper, you may find yourself saying "Why didn't I think of that?".

First things first. According to the rest of the world, you do not exist past your name. You are but one of millions. In order to obtain recognition from both your peers and your elders, you must make high achievements in their areas of interest. Parental recognition is easy, because their main interest is you well-being. This is being said so that you understand that the world does not revolve around you. It doesn't care about you, yet. In order to survive in this world, you will need to learn how to support yourself and stay on your feet. Now this is often the words for someone with rent to pay, but this is said to hopefully get you out of the "kiddie" age and into your adulthood. In ancient cultures, those who have grown to your age would be sent to hunt a giant creature with nothing but a spear. School is the training. Life is the creature.

Which brings us to the next part, listening to the training. It can be very boring. There will be those who will strive to disrupt this process by any means necessary. Those who do disrupt do not understand that they are actually destroying themselves. By now you will have lived what seems like ages, when in reality are just barely getting to the second quarter. You have alot of life ahead, and deciding to have fun now instead of working will make the rest of your life worse. Why would you want to play now? To you, life is too short to hassle with work. Because you, as stated before, have yet to live for a while. This is the time to work. You are not going to like it. But it will not kill you either. And as the saying goes, "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." I see it as letting your skin toughen, like how hot water used to seem to burn your hand when you were little, but now feels alittle warm. This is how life teaches you. School will teach through practice. Which is the topic of the next paragraph.

"Practice makes perfect" is an old and true saying. Homework is practice, but it will not often be easy. I found to accept practice in homework through other actions, such as learning a new game or even how to tie a shoe. Homework is not so that you are kept busy, but to ensure that you understand the material being presented. But why try to learn things you know you will never need again? In a song I once heard, a lyric sang "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans". It means that life/God has other ideas for your future. There are probably somethings in the past you have unwillingly learned that you now do everyday. How to march, when your parents wouldn't carry you. Even if you're taking something as specific as Advanced Calc. when you're planning to go into something as simple as truckdriving, you will need that knowledge at some point down the road.