Okay, so I'm joking for the most part, but seriously, now I have one less thing to have to do instead of 100% dedication to cramming.
I've never actually struggled with trying to write a blog post, but I'm really freaking out over this one. See, in high school before IB I was never worried about anything at all, I was really laid back and I don't think I cared about anything. All I cared about was fighting. While that's actually a hilarious statement, it's true, I would spend at least 24 hours a week training at the dojo for tournaments. I also cared about my brother and the special olympics athletes I coached. That was the span of it though, and my interests. I was good at art, but I didn't care about it, I was just naturally good at a lot of things. I changed a lot in high school though. There are issues I'm aware of now, I actually cared about learning and educating myself and improving at things other than, you know, throwing punches. I know who I am now, something I certainly never was aware of. Honestly, this is just going to seem like a late night rant, which it is, but I just think it's a little amusing knowing that four years ago when I got up in the morning I was thinking about training and now that's the very last thing on my mind.
When I was in elementary school I was certain I wouldn't make it very far. Having learning disabilities made me feel like a failure. I worked extremely hard with studying in order to comprehend things and frequently went to the doctors so that they could figure out what was "wrong" with me. Probably quite a few things, but point is, suddenly stuff started to click. Middle school was easy, and contributed to me not really taking school seriously until junior year since I could slide by with A's but IB was different. There was work and not caring couldn't cut it. You had to care. And holy shit do I care now. Junior year was also when I got extremely invested in the clubs I had been a member in, junior year was the first year I felt stupid but not like a failure. It was challenging and while fighting depression once again I started to think I wasn't going to make it to where I am today.
At this point there are so many things I care about. I care about my art, where I'm going, who I am, my friends (boy do I care about y'all way too much what the heck guys), learning, improving myself, proving myself, and I care about tomorrow.I always cared about people but not like I do now, I didn't care about what people I didn't know were experiencing, only those close to home. Now I can actually see the kind of impact every single individual has on each other and how much it really matters. I don't know what it was that kicked me in the face and opened my eyes but it was around the time I joined IB so maybe it contributed..
When I read this blog post I started having a panic attack. Thinking about my past is weird, the memories are jumbled and hazy and it makes me feel overwhelmingly sick. I hate who I was, but I'm just really excited to see who I am. Even if it's nothing extremely amazing or significant I want to live my life, see what kind of shitstorm I can cause, you know? Now I feel a lot of adrenaline, its almost 11 PM and I want to go start a fire then save everyone and put it out, check me out on WRAL, kids.
Okay but really I'm gonna go sleep, goodnight Obama and goodnight America.
Aw Sam this was a really awesome post. It is really cool to see how we've all changed and whats caused those changes (like I feel like IB has changed a lot of us or at least made us more comfortable that we don't really care about being really weird anymore). I definitely agree with your outlook on the future and I'm sure you'll do some pretty darn awesome things over at ECU. Also, thank you for formally addressing me (Obama) at the end, I really appreciate that.
ReplyDeleteThis was a really great post Sam, and I can certainly relate a bit to what you've said. Moving from elementary through middle school and certainly into high school I didn't have a terribly hard time academically, but I really didn't have many friends or good social relations. I got bullied a lot and my home situation made me really distant on top of that. But I got the same thing you did when I started in IB. At first, I was able to apply myself just as much as before, but it quickly became a challenge that I really think I needed to get myself properly motivated to go above what I had previously let myself do. I certainly felt a lot better towards to end of this year and even last year because I think that all the group work and class discussion let me connect with and communicate with people a lot better than I'd ever been able to. Plus, now I know a lot more about what I personally think about a lot more things than I'd ever considered before. And not inconsiderable to making my high school experience a lot better was being friends with you, so thanks a lot bb.
ReplyDeleteWhoa this blog post was so great!!! I really like how you put the change between sophomore year and IB, because I feel like it was very similar for me too. I really did not care about school very much at all freshman and especially sophomore year. There were classes that I would just spend the whole time doodling in and I would never do any work because I didn't care and I could get an A without paying attention. To be honest I still do that today with math, but besides that I definitely have become much more engaged with school due to IB. It's really weird to feel so emotionally attached to your work in an English class, but like I really cared about everything that we did this year. The blog posts were so much fun, and I loved the blackout poems. Never Let Me Go was so sad too like and I felt like I was able to do better on my IOC because I really genuinely cared about Tommy and Kathy and Ruth and what happened to them. So yeah, I think that the fact that IB made people care was one of the best things about it.
ReplyDeleteDude I feel ya this post was so hard to write in comparison to the others, like analyzing literature is easy but analyzing OURSELVES??? Damn, ToK.
ReplyDeleteYou've made it so far man and you're gonna do so much cool stuff after this year is over its gonna be so great! IB has been a difficult mess but I'm so glad we both ended up in it because it's honestly been a lot easier knowing you and Oliver and Margaret!