Everyday I go to school to learn things that will never be applicable to my life as an adult

Bored with nauseating integrals and forgetting Styx and green anxiety and the need to cry when 

I take a test on how well I can memorize things

Tell me why I graduate in a month and I can figure out the points at which a parabolic function

crosses the x-axis but I can’t tell you how to balance a checkbook

After school expected to have clubs and sports and volunteer work and a social life and

homework and still have time to get eight hours of sleep.

I go to school to get into a good college so that I can get a job so that I can make money so that 

I can send my kids to college so that they can get a job so that they can make money so that they can send their kids to college

It’s a never-ending cycle. We live in a society that praises kids taking four AP classes, involved 

in two sports and three clubs all because it looks good on a college application

But we turn the other cheek when that same child wants to kill themselves because the stress is

too much on them

Tell me why I know that the force an object exerts is equivalent to the mass of the object

multiplied by it’s acceleration but I don't know how to cope with the pain of wanting to hold a gun to my head and pull the trigger

It’s an easy day, really. Wake up at six, get ready for school, go to school early for a meeting for 

one of the four clubs I’m but don’t know the name of. Have physics, then AP chemistry, calculus, then a half hour for lunch, followed by engineering, then English, then history, practice immediately after school.

One hour of physics. Forty minutes of chemistry. Twenty minutes reserved for calculus. Two

hours to read twenty pages of a book because I can’t concentrate on it for my grandfather is sick and it’s my job to take care of him.

Fifty minutes of memorizing facts for history. Hoping my family is too busy to notice I didn’t eat

Go to work, make time for the gym, walk the dog, feed the cat, do your laundry take a shower, 

but not a break. Go to bed at ungodly hours of the night. Hide your tiredness with coffee, energy drinks, and the fear of failure

Tell me why I need to know that over 168,000 died during the Civil War but I don’t understand 

war going on between my brain and body

I’m seventeen years old. I can’t drink. I can’t smoke. I’m expected to act like an adult while 

being treated like a child

Tell me why I have to know what I want to do for the next sixty years of my life, but I don’t get

a say in who my government officials are

And then, of course, there are the rules we must live by on school grounds.

Skirts must be knee-length. It distracts the boys and the male teachers. Girls? In tank tops? When

it’s June and 80 degrees outside? You, being a teenage girl, mustn’t distract the boys with your shoulders. Don’t be late to class. I don’t care if you were working the night-shift to keep your family off the streets.

But that’s not the end of it. The unspoken rules come next. If she’s pregnant, she’s a whore. Even 

if she was raped. She was probably asking for it. The girl cutting herself is doing it for attention. Ignore the demons pulling at his ankles like if they sacrifice their body it will set them free from Hell

If she’s smart, she’s a know-it-all. If she’s dumb, she’s just going to have to marry rich. If she’s 

confident, she’s arrogant. If she’s not confident, she’s attention-seeking. If she tells the truth, she’s a bitch. If she lies, she’s not loyal. She just can’t win.

We’re taught skinny is beautiful. If you’re tall, don’t wear heels. Don’t do this, don’t do that.

Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.

The second mental illness comes up I’m an attention-whore, hands trembling from anxiety. 

Tell me why it’s so important that I know that blue represents sadness, but it’s not important if I

couldn’t do my homework because I was writing my suicide note.

And, tell me why our education system is so fucked up.