I love school. It is a place where I am preparing for my future. It is a place where I interact and engage with people who are employed to educate the next generation of learners. I love it. However, some of my peers do not. I always wonder why. Is it because they have to take some classes they don't enjoy? Is it because they sometimes feel lonely? As cliché as it sounds, the only way to make school fun and entertaining, is to simply make school fun and entertaining.
What does it mean to make school more bearable and enjoyable? The image of a class clown comes to mind. The class clown is generally someone who focuses more on making the class the laugh, than on their English reading. For me, my goal is to both thrive academically and comedically in a classroom setting. I seek to make the class more tolerable and enjoyable for both the student and the teacher. I believe that if you can still get high grades on the work in class, why not make the class more interesting and stimulating? As I've grown from a petrified freshmen to a comfortable, confident, high school senior, I've begun to realize that the amount of laughter and silliness in a class depends on the teacher. If you have a strict teacher, focus on making intellectual comments, not relating your English book to the latest Beyoncé song. If your teacher makes jokes, or sarcastic comments, then by all means, channel your inner Tina Fey or Seth Meyers. Try to make the class laugh, but in a witty, intelligent way. Do not make irrelevant comments just to be funny. The key is to be funny, while relating your class discussion to popular culture. The one rule: The extent of the joking in class is entirely dependent on the teacher and classroom environment.
As my friends would kindly say, math is not my forte. Math is a class that I take in high school because I must do so in order to graduate. I've learned proofs, parabolas and more throughout my years. Though math is difficult for me, I attempt to keep my complaining to a minimum. I understand that math is a required subject and I must take it to advance to further endeavors in my life. What keeps my spirits up, is that (hopefully) after years of spending time finding the domain and range of a cubic graph and solving for x, I will have more liberty to choose my classes in college. I have worked for many hours solving the pythagorean theorem, the distance formula and much more in order to attain high marks in math classes. Just because you do not enjoy the class, does not give you an excuse to slack off and not do the work. As someone who loves the humanities, I love reading and asking questions about the assigned passage. Yet, I must also take pride in classes where I traditionally struggle, such as the sciences and mathematics. I must strive for the highest grades in these classes as well.
Socially, freshman year was a challenging year for me. I had a tough time adapting to a new school environment. As someone who loves sports, I used them as a vehicle to get closer to my new classmates. By sophomore year, I was in a fantasy football league with a group of my classmates, and have continued to participate in it for all of high school. Though it may seem challenging, if you have an optimistic, friendly attitude you can make friends. I've made some of my closest friends from my cross-country team and from some basic conversations in my classes. Even if people aren't always directly interested in the same hobbies as you are, you can find some commonalities.
School can be a long, daunting process. The key to make it lasting and memorable is to have fun with it. Make some jokes in your classes, get to know your teachers, try hard even in classes that you do not enjoy and meet some new people. If you are going to be sitting in different rooms for nine months, why not make these months hilarious and memorable?