I just don’t care anymore. I used to care when I was little. I would do the work diligently. It was easy, to be honest. I don’t think school ever challenged me. It’s not because it’s hard. That’s not the problem.

Eventually I started to understand it, in the context of the real world. I think things started clicking when I got my first bit of “busywork”. I would complete an assignment before anybody else, and so I was given more work to do while the other finished their assignments, work that nobody else would have to do, almost like a punishment for being good at the work. That was when I started picking up that the work was ultimately arbitrary.

Don’t get me wrong, some of the concepts make sense to teach kids. I think there’s a basic layer of knowledge kids should be required to pick up. But adults seem to think that, if given the chance to do whatever they want, kids won’t pursue knowledge they want on subjects they’re passionate about, so they decide to force a great big stew of random information they most likely don’t want or need down their throats.

And I’m just sick of it. I don’t want to do it anymore. It just all feels so pointless, to the point of almost being insulting. I’m sitting here pondering what I want to do with my life, what kind of mark I want to make on the world, trying to understand what’s wrong with my own mind and why I am the way I am, and then I get interrupted by a sheet of paper full of algebra and am expected to solve these problems that someone else already knows the answer to. I feel like a pet being expected by his owner to do the right trick when they say the words.

I know I need to graduate. And I want to. I don’t want to drop out. I don’t want to end up with a G.E.D. I’ve heard from everyone I know that it makes your life so much harder to live with a G.E.D. Not to mention my parents wouldn’t let me drop out anyways, they would be far to disappointed in me “wasting my potential”.

I’m a sophomore right now, and this year it’s looking like I’m not gonna make it. I’ve made it up to this point with a mix of being yelled at and terrorized to the point of doing the work by my parents and being in the favor of teachers because I’m probably the most respectful student in their classes. That won’t help me anymore. I’ve become totally numb to their yelling, and none of my teachers care about me (not like I care about them, either, I’ve spent so much of the year distracting myself from my own thoughts with music that I probably couldn’t tell you all of their names). I’ve become the quiet kid that nobody would ever willingly interact with. I massively failed almost all my classes last semester, so I’m already pretty screwed. I couldn’t pass this semester if I tried because at this point, I’ve spent so much time not paying attention that all the work actually makes no sense to me. They put me in an online credit recovery program to see if it would work out for me, but it’s been two months and I haven’t even gone to the website they said it was on, let alone logged in and done anything.

I just have absolutely no motivation, it’s all ********, but necessary ********, and I just... No motivational words help. I’ve heard all the usual ****. “It’ll be better if you just get it over with now.” “It’s only for 3 more years (oh yay).” “If you don’t like school, why are you making yourself stay there longer?” None of it helps. Even when I really do want to do it, when I’m actually presented with the work, I space out.

If something doesn’t change I’m going to me a lifeless deadbeat working a dead-end job. I’ll have made my own bed, whether I wanted to or not, and I’ll have to sleep in it. It will be nobody’s fault but my own.

If I ended up like that, I don’t think I would want to continue living.

But I don’t know what to do.