HOME | DD

Description
It was once said by Elie Wiesel, a famed writer and Nobel Prize winner that “The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference.  The opposite of art is not ugliness, it is indifference.  The opposite of faith is not heresy, it is indifference.  And the opposite of life is not death, it is indifference.”  I believe that this statement perfectly describes my experiences and feelings of my school.  Throughout my school years in my current school system I have greatly felt this indifference radiating off at me from the students, and in some cases, the faculty as well.  I understand the indifference to some degree, because of the population of the school.  In a school as populous as Minnetonka High School, it doesn’t have much of a choice but to be anything other than a school that encourages conformity, compliance, and benumbed consistency.  I believe that this indifference is the cornerstone of this conformity, compliance, and consistency.  And in so being a large school, I can imagine the ‘how and ‘why’ as to the school’s reasons for which it does not accommodate the needs of the individual—those who act as a single mind in a sea of many, such as myself—but rather (whether intentionally or unknowingly, of that I’m not certain) persuades all those who will follow into a lulling of some sort of perverted sense of unity, giving everything left in its wake a sort of “conformituitous” (sorry, but I just had to make up a word there because apparently founders of the English language didn’t bother to add the adjective for of ‘conformity’—and yes, I added it to my SpellChecker, thank you very much) ossification of an aftertaste.  Don’t get me wrong here, though—if people want to go to their pep rallies and cheer for their beloved home team, I can’t say that I have any quarrel with that, because that’s not in fact nearly the point that I’m trying to make.  What I’m trying to say is on a much deeper level than that, but only for the reason that so many people don’t look, they just see.  What I am very generally trying to say is that at my current high school, a person’s individuality isn’t given any concern, doesn’t seem to be given any thought by the other nameless who surround them and step in time with the given commands—there are just way too many kids for them to be all individuals and still be able to function as a public school, but still I feel that this is a very pathetic excuse.  To be blunt, this just plain does not work for me or anyone with an “artist-type” persona, for that matter.  People with an art-centered lifestyle and persona think far differently than those with a…I don’t want to say inferior, but just not art-oriented outlook, which also plays into the types of learning styles you offer for people like me, which I will get into later.

I am not saying that it’s below me to be a part of the crowd, but it is frustrating for me because I know that people will never seem to take what I do seriously unless they address my individuality, since that is one of the main axioms of the arts—whether it be visually, theatrically, literarily, or musically focused.  And since my individuality is not addressed, how can I ever be expected to break free?  To do what I know I was born to do?  To reach out and share what I have to offer, to as many people as possible?  How is this attainable if my individual talents are not nurtured and respected, but rather pacified and pressed down with a forceful palm, a malevolently soothing voice speaking to me as the weight on my back increases: “Be still and do not stand taller than the ones who kneel before you; get back on your knees”?  But I refuse to be pushed down and join those who refuse to stand.  I refuse to do this, just as Emiliano Zapata, an early 20th century Native Mexican revolutionary, when I say, Algo morir en mi pie que vivir uno curso de la vida en mis rodillas, or, “I would rather die on my feet than to live a lifetime on my knees.”  To live on my knees would be to accept that my life is predetermined and therefore deemed meaningless by the individual’s mind, and to accept the fact that where I now stand—or kneel, rather—is all that there ever can be and all that ever was and will be.  To live on my knees would be to just surrender to the unknown, because although I am fortunate enough to be standing on solid rock, I fear that it will sink into the sand and suffocate and burry all hope of fulfillment.  And to live on my knees would be to accept the things I see in front of me as just the way things are and not look through to see what they could be.  Such things are a sacrilege in the face of individuality, and I cannot live in blasphemy any longer.  I must create a schism, get up off of my knees, bite the hand that feeds me indifference.

I firmly believe that in order to do this, to achieve the utmost success, I need to start over with how I go about learning.  This is where PCAE’s unique style of learning system comes in.  Even if I stay up until 5 AM, my mind is still racing with thoughts and ideas and daydreams of all kinds, so when I sit in my desk at school staring at an overhead projection explaining to me in mind-numbingly boring detail the stages of the Calvin Cycle of Photosynthesis, I cannot help doing something else a little more creative than placidly sitting there like everyone else being force-fed information that is meaningless to my life.  Don’t get me wrong, because under the right environment that would be actually pretty interesting but not when I’m just sitting there with a dumb expression on my face watching the nerdy kid covertly picking his nose and examining his buried treasure, and meanwhile the giggly girls are giggling and the hippies are hippy-ing (my biology class is like Woodstock ’67, seriously; the unwashed hair in there could stretch for miles, and I think I have figured out where the instant flaky mashed potatoes come from, because I think that every Thursday when they have their Earth Club, people come in to the room and the hippies are held upside down by their legs and are shaken until all the dandruff falls out into a big collection bin, then they box it, say it’s delicious, and ship it off to a grocery store near you, where you buy it because you think Oh, wow, instant potatoes, what will they think of next?  There’s no peeling involved, but definitely there is some peeling involved only its off of the scalp of a Grateful Dead-worshipping gray-beard who calls himself “Father Time,” and whose hobbies include staring at multicolored shiny surfaces and cleaning the resin from his bong—but I guess I’m a sucker for those potatoes too, even if they are in fact made from dried hippy-scalp), outside the birds are birding (singing), the flowers are flowering (blooming), and I can’t help but find a sense of tranquility wash over me when I realize the fact that now the world is in perfect balance because now I know that in order to be a prokaryote a micro-organism must lack a nucleus, and I scream “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” . . . or not.   I’m not distracted by that, and it’s not hard to concentrate on the lecture because of that, but at the same time I just wanna say “Kid, if you’re gonna pick your nose then pick it like you mean it!  You’re not foolin’ anyone with the “sneakiness”!  And you giggly people, stop giggling because I bet you don’t even know what you’re giggling about anymore anyways, because ever since you’ve walked in here it’s just been one continuous sound, like a foghorn, and hippies, please, still your hacky-sacks, clean out the earwax and give it to the snot-eater, ‘cause maybe he wants some, too, and then listen to me: I don’t know anyone around here who cares how you have resisted the temptations of red meat for three months now and how your hardcore hippy pal won’t eat anything but toenails and hedge clippings!”  The fact of the matter is that it’s not what one teaches it’s how one goes about teaching it, when it comes to school, and from what I have heard of the outlook on teaching for the artist’s mind—something creative, not such a mundane approach—from the presentation last Saturday, was the way in which I need classes to be taught, something to speak to that side of me that isn’t like everyone else—the individual.  Because the individual loves to learn.  The individual loves to teach.  The individual loves to write.  And most importantly, the individual loves to talk in the third person.  I think that I am just a shrub waiting for the right time to blossom, but I suppose that that’s what a parasite does too, so I guess it’s not that good of an example, so take your pick.
I’m not trying to suck up, but I just wanna say “Thanks” for reading this, and I hope that you found it funny, and I hope you found it meaningful, but most importantly I hope that you found out that it made you feel something.  And whatever that something was, I hope that you learned something from me, or more appropriately in this case, about me.  If you hold these things to be true, then I know that I have succeeded.  Thank you.