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I received a call two days before Christmas
vacation. I knew who
it was before my mom pushed play on the answering machine.
“Please have Elyse come tomorrow to pick up things and
clean out her locker,” the principal said.
The room just froze like it was a scene from some cheesy
action movie. My mom
looked at me and started to get so furious. I could see in her eyes she wanted to kill me.
Instead, she just cried.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked in between sobs.
“You’re perfectly capable of doing better.”
I realized at that moment that I had messed
up big time and I needed to figure out how to fix this one.
I went to school the next day.
The principal didn’t even me my release papers.
She didn’t even tell me good-bye.
Instead, she had the school counselor expel me while she
watched from around the corner.
These were the people who are supposed to be mentors.
But they weren’t. They were cowards. Since
my friends were on their way to class, I didn’t get a chance to
tell them good-bye.
The bell rang.
It was good-bye to my old school, and still hadn’t fixed
my problem. I was out
of school for the next two weeks.
My mom was adamant about finding a school right away.
I decided to change my ways.
No more drugs. No
more parties. No more worthless friends.
I’ve been at my present school for 2 ½
years. I still good
off, like not doing homework and caring more about my social life
than school. Then, I ask myself the same question the media asks, as well
as most adults - “Is there too much pressure on me as a
teenager?”
Of course there is.
We’re pressured to be a lot of things – “the jock”,
the person with the high GPA, the leader of the National Honor
Society. We’re sometimes portrayed as the bad kid in and out of
jail, or the Goth chick that wears only black and looks like
she’s allergic to the sun.
We’re told not to be afraid of individualism, yet we’re
told not to color outside of the lines.
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