NW Passage
TRY NOT TO
BLINK
Senior Grace Logan looks toward a swing set April 4 at Quivira Glen Park. photo by Evan Johnson
opinion | 05
With the end of senior year approaching, it’s time to go out and have some dumb fun by Grace Logan I miss playing outside. Well, I don’t miss the mosquito bites… …Or the scraped knees. …Or the sunburns. But I do miss the “dumb fun” of it all. When I was seven or eight, the neighborhood kids and I had this ritual: The one who lived at the bottom of the hill would come and knock on the door of the person who lived halfway up the hill – me – and see if we could play together. Then, we would go along gathering other kids as we walked. We always seemed to end up in the backyard of the “rope swing house” at the top of the hill. In my eight-year-old mind, this swing was unlike any other. It was on the slope of the hill, with a deck conveniently placed just for us to have a place to jump from. We would swing for hours and see who could swing the highest.
And who could go the fastest. And who could touch the tops of the trees. My first geometry lesson was trying to calculate the perfect place to jump from in order to go directly between two trees. It was a painful trial and error process. I’m a senior. I’m about to graduate. I’m about to be an adult. I need to learn how to be responsible enough to survive on my own. There isn’t any more time to have dumb fun. That’s how I operated for most of the year, but that’s not how it should be. I should allow myself to have “dumb fun.” I should spend more time with my friends – go on hikes, ride bikes, go swimming. The reality of the situation is: our childhood is coming to an end. We should enjoy the last few months we have in high school and allow ourself to let go of the academic stress a little. Our remaining time will go by in a blink.
NOTHING LEFT TO GIVE Working through unrealistic expectations in academics I sat on my bed, my mom’s arms around me, while tears streamed down my face and my body trembled. Nothing left to give. I had come to a tipping point where four pages of homework a night wasn’t feasible anymore. I didn’t want to do it anymore. I couldn’t. There has always been pressure to be perfect. I was always told I had so much potential. In my brain, it wasn’t an option to not meet those expectations. The stress decreased the next year going into middle school, but then COVID-19 hit. Now in high school, I am stressed out most of the time. I wish I could pick classes out of the simple desire to learn new things. If I wasn’t good at it, then it was okay. I want to learn how to learn. Not how to work on homework until I physically can’t focus anymore. Not how to comfort myself by saying,
“it’s just for completion points.” Not how to ignore the work I have to do just to feel relief. The pressure to maintain good grades and excel at everything causes students to end up missing the point of school. They see it as a task to get out of the way before they can have any fun. I would love more than anything for the “task” that takes up my time to be something I can enjoy without wanting to go home and cry about it everyday. Something that could expose me to new ideas and possible interests without feeling like the purpose of it is to get a grade. I’ve finally gotten to the point where if I look at my grades and see something lower than an A, it doesn’t make me feel bad about myself. No one should feel lesser than or dumb because they don’t have perfect grades.
by Sophie Delaney
Sophomore Sophie Delaney examines her math worksheet March 30 in room 151. photo by Sophia McCraney