thoughts about my education.

I just watched Waiting for Superman and I'm not entirely sure what to say about it. I didn't cry (I don't have tear glands), but I will say it does make you think quite a bit. The only thing one of my roommates said after the movie was "We are so lucky." The movie hits closer to home than any of those movies about poverty in Africa because it looks so familiar. I used the same pencils, had to take the same exams, and saw kids crash and burn around me too. I never wondered why, because from a very young age I understood that life is unfair. Maybe too young. I think it's important for kids to have a sense of invincibility and pure optimism for at least a little bit. I managed to make my way into an excellent magnet middle school and a pretty awful high school. I remember one kid that I used to walk to school with in elementary school- he was the first boy and only boy I've ever kicked in the groin. And it was by accident. He was a good kid in elementary school as far as I knew. I came back for high school and he had blue spiked hair and was wearing a shirt that said "I'm the boy that your mother warned you about". The next time I saw him, he was getting the shit beaten out of him. Another kid was sitting on his chest and ripping out all seven of his piercings.

I still talk to one of my seventh grade science teachers, who once paid me $2 for a drawing of a maple leaf (I named my own price), and let me paint a huge tree on the floor of the classroom. He lit an exam on fire after the exam's owner was caught cheating. He gave me a book about the holocaust in China, simply because I didn't know about it-- and he knew that I needed to know. I also had a terrible sixth grade math teacher that mis-taught me to the point that I nearly failed sixth grade math. I went through high school without making any sort of connection with any teacher. I liked some better than others, but in the end, all of their names are kind of fuzzy and they did their jobs well enough and left it at that.

This post isn't really supposed to have a point other than that I know that I'm a lucky girl.