Thinking
back to my junior high and high school years I recall going through many
emotional stages. Happiness, sadness, fear, contention but the one that comes
to mind overpowering the rest of those emotions is stress. Just the other day I
was trying to figure out what my extracurricular activities were back then and
what my hobbies were and I came to realization; I had none. In Greece there is
hardly any free time to enjoy your childhood, because of the difficulty of
subjects in education and the high level of expectations educators have from
students at the ages 13-18.
Going
into junior high school we are given a whole bunch of new subjects we must
excel in and that can be very overwhelming for a child going through puberty.
It is very tough and right when you think you are getting used to it and that you
can handle the workload you are given more and more to do every year that goes
by. Upon entering high school there is just so much to do, all I wanted to do was;
scream. There was the homework, the tests, the memorizing of whole chapters and
much more to be done. This leads parents to send their children to private
tutoring right after school hours.
I
remember finishing school at 2:15 every day and having to rush home to eat and
make it to English school 3-5. I would immediately have to go to my next
private lessons that covered all subjects taught in school by three different
teachers at three different locations. I would sometimes walk and sometimes be
picked up by my father to make it in time. This would go on until around
9pm. We would prepare with these private
tutors for future tests coming up in school, projects that were due and have
anything that was unclear to us, explained.
Going
home at that time was beyond exhausting and all I wanted to do was play with my
friends or go to a movie, but of course there was no time for that. I would
arrive home in time for a late dinner with the family and barely have an hour
or so to watch some television before heading to bed. This was my schedule
everyday for about six years and it was considered absolutely normal by parents
and teachers. All you want to do as a teenager is enjoy those years that are
supposed to be mostly carefree before having to grow up and accept
responsibilities. I did not get to do that though, and neither did most of the
children I went to school with.
My
world revolved around school where the main goal was trying to cram a bunch of
knowledge into my head. Now I think to myself, what was that all for? I am
going over the same topics now in college so to me that all seems pointless.
Losing all those hours I could have spent enjoying myself is very disconcerting
but there is not much I can do about it now. It helps not to think of those
times and I am definitely glad those days are over and even though I am in
college now, I have much more free time on my hands to do as I please.
That does sound like a CRAZY work schedule. I don't know how you did it.
ReplyDeleteYour paper is very focused. It knows what it wants to say and it says it with nothing extra. Good job!
You could work on sentence construction issues a little. You seem at ease writing, so you can probably take the time to think about your writing at the sentence level--figuring out where best to put commas, periods, transitions. Many of your sentences, to me, seem like they could be three separate sentences, each written with a little more punch and grace. For example:
original version: "Losing all those hours I could have spent enjoying myself is very disconcerting but there is not much I can do about it now. It helps not to think of those times and I am definitely glad those days are over and even though I am in college now, I have much more free time on my hands to do as I please."
shorter sentence / re-crafting in style version: I used to think more about all the hours I could have spent enjoying myself as a young carefree teen, but now I rarely think of those times. I am in college now, enjoying every minute of my free time to do as I please.