Right Before the Fall

It honestly feels like I'm almost at the top of the roller coaster, and soon enough I'm going to fall. So much is ready to happen- the community pitch event is next week, I have the safe space kit I ordered a couple months ago, the first GSA interest meeting is next week, too. I have so much cautious optimism in the things that are happening at school. 

I just need to keep my caution in check. I need to remember that I can do things, even when I'm so young. 

All things are now ready. They just need a catalyst to set them off- and that's me. I can do this. And anyone reading this can, too.

Let's make the world sit up and look.

Genius Time Update

I feel like I've done both a little and a lot this week. I recently looked back at my deliverables for the first quarter, and it genuinely surprised me how many of them I've gotten done. A lot of it was prep stuff that I want to follow up on this quarter, but it's nice to be able to think that I've done something, even if it feels like mostly talking to people and starting to arrange huge things that will pan out later. 

I want to especially work on scheduling dates with administration for later in the year. I really want to make the Day of Silence something big, and I want to nail down definitively a date for my fourth-quarter seminar. 

The fact that I haven't done that already is a faliure- a 'not yet'- on my part. I've been falling down on this class, prioritizing other things, and I need to refocus, at least enough to get a few things done. 

After I do that, maybe I can talk to my mentor a bit more easily, knowing I'm more secure in what I'm doing. He wants to help, as do other people at church and TOY and at school, and I need to step up and lead them.

We'll see how that goes.

On Vulnerability

We've been talking a lot this week about how we represent ourselves on social media, on how colleges will see us and how the rest of the world thinks of us through that.

My first instinct is to say that I'm not ashamed of anything that I've put out under my name. And I'm not. I feel like I've even been a lot more true to myself than a lot of people are, and though that's messy, isn't everyone? Should it matter what a college thinks if they see a few of the most personal things I've said, even if they find them, because I've been careful and don't put my last name on a lot of it?

I don't think so. I try to be kind to others. I have friends, I write, I participate in Girl Scouts and raise money for church and buy lollipops from the French club. I also have had a lot of minor breakdowns, venting through social media, and while I'm not comfortable with a stranger seeing that kind of thing I'll not hide that I did it.

I don't really know what to think. I know that I believe my personal blog should be a safe place for me to talk about how I feel. 

But I don't know how it'll affect my future, if at all. I don't know what to think when our teachers say that you need to be more careful, show only the good parts of yourself. Where's the truth in that? Where's the sincerity? If you lie about the worst parts of yourself, how are people supposed to know what you're really like in "real life"?

I don't know how to justify hiding things like that. I think that I'll continue trying to be as real as possible with whoever reads this, and I think that if I stop telling the truth someday that I'll have lost sight of who I am.

The Beginner's Guide

I just finished watching a Let's Play of a game that has had a profound impact on me. It's called The Beginner's Guide, and I see a lot of myself in it. I think that a lot of people could see themselves in it, but it really spoke to a lot of places in me that are dark and terrible and not nice to look at, but it spoke about them and to them and I think that anyone, anyone at all, who watched it would be moved.

So, please, sit down for the two hours that it is and watch. Let yourself watch, be engrossed in the story, allow yourself to feel what the narrator and the subject are feeling. And if you can't, that's fine. I don't think that we are meant to feel everything that someone else feels, because if we did, then I think we wouldn't be ourselves. And it's important to be ourselves.

This isn't really relevant to the project. This isn't really relevant to anything but the humanity in me, and that moves me to want or to need, even, to share it.

http://youtu.be/OPP9pdApRQE

I don't really care if you don't like the man who plays it. Perhaps you want to play it for yourself. But I think that watching allows you a connection, and that is so, so valuable, especially in the context of the game.

Do, or don't. But I think that this is important. To help, at least, with understanding.

A New Perspective on Failure

This week has been...difficult. I've been struggling with getting a handle on my mental health, and though I'm making baby steps towards getting better, my grades, my work ethic, and my mood are taking a serious dive. 

But in DigCit, we've been talking about having a sort of 'growth mindset' and the idea that if you fail, it's okay, you can try again. We discussed how that manifests itself, and we especially talked about how our education system- and a lot of the environment at our school- doesn't encourage the 'growth mindset'. I find myself too often these days in a more fixed sort of mindset. I don't know how to change that. I know that it's through a lot of factors that I believe it- but I know there needs to be a change, or kids who are still going through middle school will have these poisonous ideas as well.

It's partly me and my perfectionism. It's partly teachers who belittle and condescend to percieved 'less intelligent' students. It's partly America's standardized testing, that enforces the idea that you must have this one skill- test-taking- or you won't get anywhere in life.

I'm just a student, albeit one who has that test-taking skill. I don't know how to change our education system for the better. I look at other countries and see students at least happier, if going through no less challenging work than I am. 

I want to make a change. But my fixed mindset- the insidious idea that I am one among millions and billions, such a small part of the machine- that hampers me, even when I summon the will to fight it. 

It's a Herculean struggle every day to get up, go to school, do my work. Sometimes I fail at it, and punish myself for it, seeing the mess I've made of my life. There's still hope, though. Right now, I'm okay. I'm still here. And to anyone else who struggles the same way I do: you can do this too. You'll be okay. And I know how ineffectual and small and empty that sounds, but it's true. 

We can get through this together, and together we can make a change in history.