My greatest test of patience

I suppose the greatest test of my patience has been school. I was told high school would be the greatest days of my life but it’s never lived up to the hype. Perhaps the awareness I have of its true nature is what prevents me from feeling its “magic”. It’s like a Disney World worker visiting the park with their family, once you know what’s behind the magic and the magics’ purpose, it’s no longer magic, is it? I have an innate distrust for something meant to benefit with no gain, maybe I’m too cynical, but as evidence often shows, there is no such thing as too cynical. I can’t help but feel every minute I spend on school will only amount to a piece of paper and a handshake in the end. It makes every assignment and every second in class that much more difficult. The only way to help it would be to give in and embrace the system I have a deep distrust for.

But the system has a flaw that genuinely benefits the students over the overlords and that’s the fact that schooling depends on human teachers, some impassioned enough to educate a student beyond the prescribed formula. Maybe that’s why my patience has persisted so far, that occasional real conversation with a teacher, that occasional essay with requirements free and open enough for me to convey my beliefs to another person, that occasional prompt to force me to think deeper than the usual superficial persuade and advocate for the implied thesis. I’m a far better writer within an open and philosophical format.

I don’t know how I’ll feel at the end of this. Perhaps I’ll be grateful, but in the end, it requires enormous perseverance I may not have otherwise. In my mind, my goals and visions of the future will require perseverance and patience I can’t yet imagine. But I know in the hard moments I’ll look back at the fourteen years of hell I survived, and be patient once more.

“Some of Butte’s School Buildings (1915)” by Butte-Silver Bow Public Library is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.