"Let Down"

⚠ This is a repackaged Old Blog post. It contains an afterword written by me. ⚠

good morning, everyone. yesterday was my last day of my freshman year of high school, and i have quite a lot to say about it. no, this won't include anything about finals, because the finals were relatively easy to sit through compared to the rest of the year. with that out of the way, watch me lay out how this first year was a complete let down.
after graduating from 8th grade, i was fairly interested and even a bit excited for high school. it seemed like a fun and enthralling experience at the time, and i was "just about ready" to move on from my tiny private school to a much larger high school. well, that motivation and excitement died off two weeks in.
yes, it took just two weeks to kill my enthusiasm. either my private school was absolute sh*t at preparing me for high school, or my introverted lifestyle just got the better of me, but i quickly found out that high school wasn't gonna be fun. at all.

i'm not gonna go into how i feel that school as a whole is a complete joke and waste of my time and energy, but i figured i should mention it for the sake of this blog post. anyways, some issue i had with high school rose up almost immediately. first up, my spanish and honors algebra classes. my spanish class was fine for like, the first month, but after that the homework started to become insanely hard, and it would take me literal hours to wrap up.
now, i usually do my homework, but this was crossing the line for me. i have an actual life to live, and i'm a firm believer that anything related to schoolwork should stay where it belongs (in school). this is why homework just doesn't work; it places extra pressure on students who struggle in class to keep up and causes their grades to plummet. instead of trying to motivate them to study and work hard, they get a bunch of work thrown in their face and are expected to finish it when they don't even know how to do it in the first place.

this wasn't exclusive to spanish, my honors algebra class also had this problem. in that class, we had to rush through two lessons per day, and we had chapter tests basically every other week. the balance of class to work was nonexistent, and i found it extremely, extremely hard to keep up. also, the teacher was rude and cranky all the time, so that didn't exactly help the class all too much. yeah, we had this 20-pound math book to help us out, but this book in particular did a sh*t job at actually teaching readers how to do the problems, as it just gave a couple example problems and then said, "you're on your own, asshole".
the homework and lessons were overwhelming, to say the least, and this actually caused me to transfer to regular algebra my second semester. these two classes combined with all the other high school bullsh*t caused my mood to suffer greatly, and it was quickly affecting me mentally and socially.
i'm not gonna blame my nonexistent social life on high school itself. no, it was my fault. i'm extremely introverted and shy, and i was very intimidated to try and talk to people. i joined two clubs to try and meet new people at the start of the year, but they ultimately proved fruitless. one of the clubs was basically just full of juniors and seniors, who were a bit out of range for me. the other also just had people outside my age group, not to mention that this club was utter sh*t at informing members when meetings were scheduled. instead of oh, i don't know, emailing members, it relied on the morning school announcements (over the intercom) to let us know.
this is probably the worst way to let anyone know of club meetings, for a variety of reasons. first of all, sometimes i had PE/health in the morning, where we're outside, making it very difficult to hear what's being announced. second of all, our club meetings were like, every two months. why even bother making a goddamn club in the first place if its meetings are every two freaking months?! overall, these two clubs did jack to help my social life, and it felt like a chore just going.

so because of the terrible clubs and my shy nature, i basically had zero friends throughout the school year. even though a handful of my classmates from 8th grade attended the same school, we quickly drifted apart (mainly me from them). i did try to hang out with a couple of their new friend groups, but it was useless, as i don't have anything in common with basically anyone. i don't have any social media outside discord, i don't like modern/trendy music, and i don't play sports. if you don't have any of those things going into high school, it won't be fun. and i learned that the hard way.
my mental health quickly fell farther than it'd ever had, and by february, you could've even considered me depressed. the combination of no friends, excessive homework, and just plain hating school dragged my life and mood down the drain, and i felt dead inside. high school was ruining my life, and there was nothing i could do except sit and watch. this is why i talk about my music taste so much, as it was all i had, along with my relatively small online social life.
going into march, i started to meet with a wellness counselor at my school, who taught me how to handle my emotions properly. it was the first bit of comfort i had felt in a long while, and i really needed it. my new algebra class was fine, it was a lot more manageable and it wasn't cold. however, my honors biology class had to be moved to 4th period, which just so happened to be a lot worse than the 1st period class. it involved lots of girls (popular and utterly annoying girls), screaming, and terrible music, which is all i'll say. so that was a nice bonus.
as high school was coming closer and closer to finally ending, my grades were starting to slip. i had missed a bit more class than usual, as i was especially prone to being sick this year. i was missing homework and even some tests, and my grades were dying in front of my very eyes. after giving up precious game development time to focus on homework, my grades picked up a little bit, and i managed to keep them at A's and B's. i love giving up what i love to focus on some goddamn letters on a piece of paper. what a wonderous life we live in.

brief note: whenever i try to express my feelings on how i think school is a waste of time to my parents, they're always like "b-but no you don't understand! you have to take your spanish class because it's important for college, your main goal in life!" can i just say that i despise this way of thinking? college is not my goal in life. hell, i couldn't give two sh*ts about college. my goal in life is to pursue the things i want to do, achieve the goals i want to achieve, not some stupid pre-set goals that barely amount to anything.
near the end of may, i decided to make an album after my motivation for game-making had plummeted. the overall theme of this album is how my mood towards high school progressed throughout the year. this project turned into Thirteen, my first album. this web site was also made to fill a void in my life that had started to grow ever since 8th grade had ended. i hate school. i really, really do, especially now. school means jacksh*t to me compared to what i've been able to achieve on my own time.

overall, my freshman year of high school was a complete let down, and i'm not exactly very happy that i still have another 3 years to trudge through. however, i've learned how to adapt in high school, but i still need to figure out how to, or even if i can, thrive in it. i have a different mindset going into next year, that being to try out for different extracurriculars and attempt to interact with the people in my classes more.
hopefully next year can change my mind about high school. but for now, the future is looking bleak. summer is my saving grace, and i hope i can achieve more fulfilling things now.
- Afterword -
future LG here. yeah, if you couldn't tell, this post isn't exactly part of the "new" blog. this was from the Old Blog, back before i started using Zonelets. i decided to bring it back just because of how important it is, both as a preservation of writing and history. despite this, it isn't my proudest moment by any means. the roots of my depression and anxiety started here. with this angry, short, and rant-ridden post.

after experiencing my sophomore year of high school, going back to this year is always interesting, to say the least. the question i always ask myself is: "what if i...?" and that's the perfect way to describe this year. "what if i did this?" "what if i met so and so?" it's always "what if", and no matter what it was, i probably never did it. my already suffering social life took a nosedive after i failed to meet literally anyone. ranting on this here site was all i had. i already went over how the two clubs i joined didn't improve things, and neither did trying to fit in with other groups.
so my solution? nothing. just sit there and be miserable for the next 8 months. surely something will happen, right? well, no. who knew that doing nothing gets you nothing. i grew bitter and angry throughout the year, getting upset at both school and myself. yeah, i'm still not the biggest fan of school, but i can appreciate it a lot more nowadays. but 11 months ago i was not having it. i had no friends or activities to balance out the regular school stuff, and it left me with the most nothing-burger year imaginable. no one to talk to, no one to hang with, just... me. the quiet kid i never wanted to be.
a part of me likes to block out this year entirely. i don't look at it fondly. i only see a bitter, sarcastic kid who didn't know how to talk to people. sophomore year was a bit of a disaster in its own right, but this year takes the cake. i threw away an entire year for... nothing. had i known what could've been done to save that year, maybe it wouldn't have stung so much. i've learned a lot about the friend group i joined this year, and how their freshman year went down.
it started similar to mine- not fitting in anywhere, half-assed friend groups falling apart, not great. but somehow, in one way or another, they found each other. whether it be a dance class or a club, all the dots lined up. the thought that haunts me the most is that i actually knew about the club one of my now-friends started. circling back to "what if", i always think about what would've happened. how would this post have looked if i had simply signed up?

i think about that year a lot. i especially thought about it a lot during my "depression phase" a few months ago. the majority of this post is just "i'm lonely, school sucks, i'm lonely." gee, such a powerful, interesting read. i dunno where i imagined i'd be a year from then, but it probably wasn't where i am now.
there's one phrase that perfectly sums up my freshman year: "you miss every shot you don't take." if that's true, then i hadn't even loaded the gun. it also makes me think about the post's subtitle. originally, i called high school the "let down", mainly because i was the last song i listened to as i walked out on the last day of school. but now i realize... i was the let down.
thanks for sticking with me.