There is a certain dread in coming to school each day. I am not sure if this is unique to America, but it is definitely significant to my age group. When we were all kids in early elementary school and kindergarten, school was not very involved, just a short part of your day where you play away from home, and do a little bit of work involving spelling and phonics. However, as we get older, more and more homework pile on each night, and many honors students (students in harder classes in order to get a better education) have to stay up late every night just to get it all done. As became fourth graders in elementary school such concepts as homework were still new, and we hardly ever had any work outside of school, so as kids we could play outside and enjoy ourselves more often, but as fifth and sixth grade rolled in, things only got harder. Homework and harder studies, actually having to try in your classes in order to get ahead, instead of teachers just spoon-feeding you answers, the older the grade, the more work required, and that meant less time to have fun with each other and connect.
When I finally made it out of elementary school, I was happier than a slinky on a elevator: I was finally going to middle school, a place where I wouldn't be treated as a kid, and where I would get the respect I deserved. A place where I wouldn't have to suck up to wrinkly, crotchety, senile "monitors" in order to get an ounce of trust, where I didn't have to tolerate those "monitors" making rules against running on the play-ground at recess because it was "dangerous". In middle school though, other types of hardships set in. The time after elementary school, and before high school is said to be one of the worst times for any child, this is not only because classes get harder, teachers get sterner, homework takes longer, and recess is no-longer a choice for "favorite subject", but also because when people start to hit puberty they begin to think its totally fine to pick on anybody who isn't exactly like them (not that bullying was non-existent in elementary school, only that it is more prevalent in this time), because they're taller than you, or skinnier than you, or deeper-voiced than you, or better looking than you, or more of a "bad boy" than you, or smarter than you, or better at sports than you. Oh, jeez, sometimes its such a nightmare, especially when your hormones start to kick in, and you get all stressed out all the time, and angsty, and mad for no reason, and you start to lose friends, but this is not the end.
If you make it out of the rocky water-slide that is middle school and junior high, than you are combated with an entire new wave of problems, your future. That's right, once you hit high school, your all alone, and you have to decide which classes would be best for the occupation you want to follow, and you still haven't answered the question "what do you want to be when you grow up?" too bad, times up. If you don't know what track you want to follow, all available good tracks are gone, and your stuck with the only the worst ones than nobody picks left: you chose a mixed schedule with different classes that sound interesting, and apply to college with no real talents in anything in particular, in which case you aren't accepted to college, and you work scraping barnacles of the dock in a New Jersey shore-line for minimum wage. Welcome to the future of education, all that work and labor, all those hours staying up cramming for your test the next day, wasted. What a life.
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