vague mystique.

I wish that I could take the remote control to my plasma television, hit the rewind button, and suddenly be eleven years old again. That way I would be innocent and still have overflowing self confidence in my ability as a person, as a writer, and as a prospective college student. No longer would I have the feeling that I am a simple gnat in the world; instead, I would feel like I could conquer anything. President, top doctor, award winning author, dictator of the universe… I could be it all. No task would be too daunting, and every challenge would be tackled with both creativeness and a hunger for success.

However, and as much as want it to be so, the only thing my remote controller is compatible with is the plasma and the cable box. It is quite unfortunate. In this age of technology and inventions one would expect that a device such as this would be possible, but I guess that is not the case. Perhaps in a few centuries time travel will be possible.

These past few months I have slowly been being crushed with the harsh realization that I am a failure. When I was eleven I might have thought that this kind of thinking was impossible for me because my ego would simply not allow it, but obviously my ego has shrunken as my age progressed. Either that, or my view of the world has simply sharpened, thus swelling my logic to a size that surpasses my sense of self confidence and self worth.

There is absolutely no way that I am going to get into a good university when the time comes for me to graduate high school. My grades might have been good from fifth grade through ninth grade, but this year they have been absolutely dreadful and I hear that tenth grade is one of the most important years that colleges look at. I could not even manage to get honor roll last marking period, and don’t get me started on my midterms- they would make unemployed hobos living on the sides of highways cringe.

(First marking period, second marking period, midterm. Final grade for first semester.)

Biology: 93, 97, 94. 95
French III: 96, 85, 70. 86
World Literature: 97, 96, 91. 95
Health: 97, 97, no midterm. 97
Gym: 99, 94, no midterm. 97
Computer Applications II: 99, 101, 94. 99
Geometry: 87, 84, 77. 84
Western Civilizations: 84, 84, 70. 81

Perhaps the part about hobos cringing about my marks is a little too melodramatic, but still, I am not doing so well in my classes this year. My final grades, which are italicized, contain merely five A’s, when they usually contain six or seven. I have two B’s, and tragically, one C. It is pure luck that I got a B in Geometry in the first place; I think the only thing that held me on it was the fact that I did not do as horrid in the first marking period as the second and midterm. When it comes to Western Civilizations, it is honestly by the grace of God that I even got a C. I believe I had a D up until the week before the marking period ended, and the teacher put in an essay that he graded weirdly and that I somehow got a 94 on. The angels were watching over me that day.

If I do not manage to pull my grades up to 90 and above in the second semester in school, I fear that the only college I will be able to get into after my senior year will be the community college, which I am under the firm belief is for the slackers in school that barely passed or had to repeat years in high school. I will not achieve my goals in life by attending community college. I was just talking to my English teacher today about my plans to become an English teacher, actually, and she said that if I wanted the odds of getting a job to be in my favor, or if I wanted a really good education, I would have to get into my state university at least (Which is a good educational school, I might add).

At the rate I am going, this will not happen. At the rate I am going, I will fail Western Civilizations and end up going to summer school, get insufficient marks in all of my classes, and will accomplish nothing in life. The only income I will have will be from my taxi driving job in some big city, where I live in a run-down apartment in the ghetto part of town with quadruple locks and gun fire interrupting my REM sleep every night (No offense if you live there. I hear they are very nice). I will probably have six children, four husbands (Three of them ex, one of them a loveless marriage), be an alcoholic, and have a severe addiction to crack cocaine and marijuana.

At the same time, however, a massive part of me (Perhaps the logic part that I was talking about before) does not mind this catastrophic fate, and actually wants me to accept it because it knows that this will actually happen in the future, and wants to prepare me for it now so I will not be so shell shocked when it comes. This part of me is suppressing any desire to put an effort into my schoolwork, to study at night, and to do homework. It is making a thick, dense fog cover my memory so I forget vital information about my classes, and is making it inexpressibly difficult for me to wake up in the morning to go school. It doesn’t like that I prefer to dress preppy for school on most occasions, thus ordering me to deck out in sweat pants and hoodies, most of which do not fit me properly. It is making me daydream all through lectures, draw a complete blank of tests, and procrastinate work to the point no return. It loves to constantly remind me about my horrendous writing skills, and loves to murder my inspiration for all things creative before I am even aware I have the inspiration.

Right before I fall asleep at night and surrender myself all too willingly to the depths of my subconscious, it also likes to whisper into my ear that being the author of a far-from-optimistic blog is a worthless effort and that nobody enjoys reading endless rants about the dark sides of life told from eyes of an attention seeking sophomore, even if it does contain some true themes.

I think I will name this part of me Arnold.