Lesson Learned

“It’s called the past ’cause I’m getting past and I ain’t nothin’ like I was before; you should see me now.“
-Alicia Keys, Lesson Learned

Hi. My name is Patricia, and here’s a little background. I was born in NYC, raised in Jersey, and had the pleasure of going through freshman year in MAHS before my parents decided to move to Surprise, AZ. Quite a different atmosphere, lemme tell you.

Anyway, I came here to let things breathe. (Of course, why else would you be here, silly?)

I turned sixteen a few weeks ago, and to be totally honest, I feel like I’ve hit rock bottom. School’s getting monotonous. I feel like I’m getting a lot of things expected of me, like getting a job and learning how to drive (oh how I’d love to learn how to drive!) but now I’ve come into this crazy cycle that goes as follows: I bust my ass at school every weekday looking forward to the weekend so I can rest up on the weekend and forget to do homework and then bust my ass all over again. The problem is I’m shortchanging my parents because I just get so lazy over the weekends and they expect me to still help out. It’s frustrating to me, it’s frustrating to my parents. Another vicious little cycle I’ve succumbed to.

Overall, too, I’ve just dropped into this crippling ennui. I don’t find anything really interesting anymore. It’s getting quite destructive to all my other efforts (or lack thereof – did that make any sense?) but I really don’t care anymore. I talked to one of my friends about this, though, and she made me feel so much better. She told me that she had gone through the same exact thing when she was younger.

This is where I start smiling my head off because I remember a promise I made to my parents when I was a wee little troublemaker: I’d never succumb to the teenage rebellion stage. Ever. Of course I never kept that promise, or at the very least I stayed away from the extremes. I brought this promise up to my dad in the car one day and he smiled a little. He asked me if I knew why I made that promise. Of course, I had no idea. It was so long ago! Then, he enlightened me:

“You did it because you loved us.”

Like the little wuss I am I almost cried, but it really was true. And of course I still love my parents. I just happen to express it in a different way =)Aside from that little fuzzy daddy’s girl moment, sixteen’s been full of suck. The school I’m in now offers International Baccalaureate and Advanced Placement (gosh, I’m really jumping all over the place!) , and it starts junior year. My problem now is whether or not to go for IB or stick with AP. So far, my decision has been to run with the latter. However, my friend who is in IB bugged the crap out of me by asking me if I wanted to be number one.Come on now, I came from Macadamia land, of course I’m gonna wanna strive for number one! I’ve been striving for number one since I was little: I was in the HOPE class in my elementary school, Academy I kids scared the crap out of me freshman year but I still kept going (and in ironies of ironies I’ve been the girlfriend of one for a year now) and now I’m kicking ass as the token Asian “genius” (haha no) in my current school now. But then she told me that all the IB kids snatch up the number one spots because of their higher GPAs because of their extra amount of classes. I’ve been trying not to let it get to me but it really bothers me.

What is a class rank, anyway? It really only measures grades at face value. It doesn’t measure work ethic. It doesn’t measure the hours, the painstaking hours you spent studying your ass off just to get a B. It sure as hell doesn’t measure heart and character. But why do people strive for it?

Well, I guess we’re all naturally very competitive. Survival of the fittest in the best and worst manner. If you really don’t give a crap about class ranks, then more power to you. I just hate how a stupid number eats me up inside.

Then again, that stupid number does weigh in on college. Ah dammit, my life is full of vicious cycles!

This is an exhilarating time of my life, really. I’m acclimating to a totally new environment. I’ve hit sixteen, for heaven’s sake. It’s quite a milestone, in my opinion. I’m really coming into my own now, I think. Is this how all new sixteen-year-olds felt? New, scared, and grasping for something solid and stable? It’s like a rebirth. It’s frightening and exciting all at the same time.

I just know that life will never be the same and every little experience I’ve had, am having, and will have will be beautiful in their own rights. I’m really trying to live without regrets but sometimes it’s inevitable. You really just have to take everything one step at a time. After all, nobody can really make a SparkNotes for life.