I’m a junior and the whole school year I’ve had to put up with a lot of kids who steal, cuss, start fights, break things, scream, bring drugs, scare other people, and back stab each other, and I’m just really tired of all of it. I’ve had a lot of things stolen from me, and I have tried to ask the school for help but they don’t care. It seems like 95% of kids at my school are like this! I can’t seem to find any good people to hang out with. Even the smart kids don’t seem to want to be friends with me, when I have practically all A’s. Most of my friends dropped out, got pregnant, moved or got expelled, and a good majority of my junior class is gone. I’ve tried making new friends from different grade levels but people don’t seem to want to be friends with me. My best friend also ditched me to hang out with a group of really bad dudes. Sometimes I wonder it it’s because I dress emo and I go to a public country school out in the middle of nowhere, I don’t know. I’m also super lonely in all of my classes except one, and most of the students don’t work at all and the teachers don’t teach barely anything. The principal also doesn’t seem to care and I feel like my school is just a baby sitting business. I’m literally just sitting there the whole time in class not doing anything but listen to what teacher’s have to say about what’s going on in their lives or just random stuff, and I want to learn. All the good teachers retired and were replaced by younger and lazier teachers.
Moderator Action
Since this is seeking advice and opinions and isn’t an issue about the message board itself, let’s move it to a more appropriate forum.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
First of all I’m very sorry to hear this and hope that your situation will improve sooner or later. I can identify with some parts of what you’ve said since I often face problems making close friends and thus am lonely in many situations. However most of the circumstances you describe seem to be due to factors completely out of your control such as the preponderence of degenerate or scummy behaviour in your high school or the incompetence of your teachers. Would it be possible to get your parents or for yourself to drive to go to another high school (even if in another district) that may have better conditions?
This site may help, it is a place where you can talk and chat with people if you have problems or concerns. You can search by category, teen or adult.
http://www.7cupsoftea.com/BrowseListeners/?agegroup=teen&expertise=&country=&language=&keyword=&sortby=availability
AS to your problem I don’t know what to say. Most people on this site are considerably older than you I think. I would suggest trying to make better friends again with the guy who is now hanging out with a new group of people.
Wow, your art is so good!!! You know probably of course that lots of Artists and Musicians had a hard time in high school. I think people in high school just don’t understand your talent and personality. I think, to be quite honest, you will be very popular in college were such traits are appreciated.
Do you know each other personally?
Where are you seeing her art?
There’s a link in her profile.
Before anyone jumps in with a “kids these days” tirade, it’s important to clarify that youth of today aren’t all that bad, actually.
Hopefully I will have more for the OP later.
ding! ding! ding!
I’m sure this is a big part of it, especially if no one else “dresses emo.” You have the right to dress any way you want, but you have to accept that there are consequences to every decision. If you dress in a way that sets you apart from everyone else, don’t be surprised if you are consequently apart from everyone else.
Are there no other emo kids whatsoever at the school? if there are any other kids who dress like you do, have you approached them? I’m assuming there are not, because that’s probably the first thing you would have done.
If you really want people to hang out with, figure out who you want to be with, and try to emulate them, just a little. If being emo is the most important thing to you, then accept that it may stand between you and the other kids. You have a right to dress any way you want, but they also have a right not to hang out with you. As long as you are not actually being bullied or picked on, they are not doing anything wrong.
As for kids doing illegal or dangerous things: they are not your problem. You don’t want to hang out with them anyway, so forget about them. People have to go to high school, but aside from jail and jury duty (and the military if there is ever another draft), adults don’t have to assemble together anywhere, so being forced into close proximity with drug dealers and vandals, or whatever else is going on is not something you need to worry about long-term.
You have a little more than a year of high school left. These are the worst years of your life. It will just get better from here on out. See if bearing that in mind will help you suck it up and drive on-- and keep your grades up. The better the college you get into, the better things will get as time goes on.
My son is also a junior. His school is not really anywhere as bad as yours sounds, but I do know some of the same problems exist. I am really sorry you’re having these problems. I am going to tell you two things that will sound trite and patronizing, and really, they are just that, but they are also true: it’s not as bad as it seems, and it will get better.
Also, your art really is very good. I showed it to my son and he thought it was “totally cool” especially the unicorn pencil drawing. I showed him your post and he said that if you went to his school you are the type of person he would hang out with. I know this is true because he and all of his friends are all a little bit “different” from the norm.
Hang in there!
Oh, no: I’m 48, and I could go on about “adults these days.” I don’t know how people can treat teenagers like they are treated, generally, and then have the nerve to be shocked when they rebel. Oppressed people rebel.
It gets worse every year. Teens before the 60s were practically treated as equals by adults. By the time I was in high school, in the 80s, it had gotten oppressive, but I didn’t realize how good I still had it until I worked in a high school in the 90s. It was so very much worse. Teens now are treated like eleven-year-olds in my time. I don’t know how they stand it.
I remember once when I was sixteen, I did an overnight babysitting job for some parents who had to take one of their children to the hospital for croup. They both wanted to stay with him, so I gave their other two kids dinner, put them to bed, and slept on their couch. My aunt and uncle lived about six houses away, and one of them would have come over if I needed something, but I didn’t have any trouble. I think if someone today left their kids overnight with a sixteen-year-old, so matter how responsible she was (and I was a really strait-laced teen), they’d be accused of child neglect. At any rate, the father was home by six am, before the kids were even awake.
Thanks, I checked her profile first and still missed it the first time.
You are really talented. I would say that maybe some of classmates are jealous.
Will you be studying art in college? Have you chosen a school yet?
This will repeat what a lot of the others here are saying, but it’s absolutely true.
What makes you ‘different’ in high school is what makes you ‘interesting’ as an adult. High school is all about being just like everyone else. College and forward is about being valued as the unique and individual person you are.
In a few short years you’ll be going to your first reunion. The kids that were part of the herd in high school will be stuck there, always too fearful of not being popular to change and grow. It will be the kids like you that will have blossomed, grown, succeeded and who are happy.
Hang in there!
This won’t solve your problems but something that might put your troubles in context is the documentary American Teen. One of the main characters, Hannah, has some similar struggles.
The landscape paintings in ink are goddamn gorgeous. Keep it up, Cathy967!
Have you considered switching to an online program? I don’t know what your state offers but it might have resources for that. In Ohio, where I live, there’s a program through the state that provides a computer if the family doesn’t have one and then enrolls the student into a online school. Here’s the little blurb about it for Ohio -
http://education.ohio.gov/Topics/School-Choice/Community-Schools/eSchools
There might be something similar for your state.
I mean, most of what you’re describing will be solved when you graduate and go off to college. High school is just something we all have to push through. But an online program might relieve some of the pressure.
You actually went to a high school reunion?
But then how will she get her revenge in a New Yorker story when she’s 30?
Seriously, a lot of YA authors kept diaries, and draw on them for material. I went to high school with Meg Cabot, and I know she did (I think she based a character on me once, although I won’t say which one). It took about 20 years of distance before she could use it, but look where it’s gotten her. She had a social group in high school, and was popular within her group,but she wasn’t popular in junior high, or elementary-- it took her a while to find her footing too.
She always wanted to be a princess, too, which is why she made one of her characters one, I suspect.
Maybe start keeping a journal. It’ll help you express your feelings now, and maybe in the future, you can write a book that will make a kid like you, who isn’t even born yet, feel less alone.
Also, you might look online for literary works based on journals or diaries. You are not too young for Anais Nin or Virginia Woolf, or Vera Brittain, some things I loved when I was your age.
And for laughs, check out Dorothy Parker. She’ll take your mind off your problems. No kidding. Go read some 70-year-old book reviews that are screamingly funny. She was a outcast in high school too.
High school sucks. I got out of there and went to college which was much, much better. When I graduated from college I packed my bags and headed to NYC where I lived for 7 years, having grand adventures and loving every moment of life. That is where I met my husband, got married, had a baby, etc. Now we live in the 'burbs of Boston and we are are blissfully happy here too. Every moment after I walked across that graduation stage in high school has been better than before, even those moments where I was broke or hungry or working two jobs or whatever.
Try to have fun in high school if you can. Learn as much as it is possible to learn while you are there. But know that at the end of it all life gets so much better.
Yeah, I like those ink paintings (drawings?) a lot.