Reviewing an old school assignment: Have I always been this cynical? The answer may surprise you.

 I keep a binder up in my closet with a bunch of old school work dating back to High School in it. This morning I was rummaging through it, looking for something to use as an art reference for my webcomic Alcatraz High. And I found the assignment above. There’s no date, so I don’t remember when exactly I wrote it. Due to a reference to a specific incident that happened to me in Junior year, the earliest it could have been written would have been late Junior year, which was 2003 for me. This may have been some kind of creative writing prompt; for all I know it could have been written later and I was putting myself back into my high school mindset, which would have been much easier to do in early college than it would be now. I honestly don’t remember writing it. It appears to be a mock answer key to a test, but within it are some valuable tidbits from my years as a sarcastic and moody teenager who even back then saw right through all the bullshit of the world. This is stuff that’s going to help me with my comic, because there’s a lot I don’t remember. Anyway, I will transcribe it in case it’s hard to read, and provide commentary.

High School Answer Key

Question 1: How was Homecoming Week

Question 2: How was the dance?

Question 3: Did you do your homework?

Question 4: How are you doing in school?

Question 5: What is your GPA?

Question 6: Is it true when people say “these are the best years of your life”?

Answer 1: It was a nauseating display of “pride” in the very thing that imprisons us, forces us to conform and makes our lives miserable.

Answer 2: Loud, hot, clammy, lacking oxygen, crowded, filled with crappy hip-hop music; mark answer right if the student guessed any of these.

Answer 3: Only in the classes I didn’t do it for last class. The teachers say it should only take an hour; little do they know I have five other teachers who feel the same way about their homework.

Answer 4: I would be doing good if it wasn’t for the dead beat moron I got paired up with for a project that was 25% of my grade who didn’t do any work and made me do it all, resulting in my getting an “F”. 

Answer 5: Saying that your GPA matters in college is the biggest lie told in school. As long as it’s decent, it doesn’t matter.

Answer 6: It may be the best years of your life if you’re a jock or a cheerleader. If you aren’t and these are still the best years of your life, you must have had a pretty crappy life.

Elaborations on my Answers

Ah the precious high school memories this brings back. Even back then I suspected the purpose of school “pride” is to create a unifying factor among the students so that they will be more obedient and less likely to rebel against their oppressors. Nationalism is this on a larger scale, by the way.

I went to maybe two dances the entire time at High School and didn’t enjoy myself in the slightest. I never had a girlfriend first off, and as a metalhead at the time they never played my type of music. Wouldn’t it be fun to have Cradle of Filth played at a school dance? 

I do remember having to prioritize my homework due to having too damn much of it. I would figure out which assignment would have the least impact on my grade if I didn’t do it, and focus on more important ones. The teachers always acted like their class was the only class their students had. Perhaps this was a result of tunnel vision, myopia, or as I suspected as a teen, the teachers got together and coordinated their assignments this way deliberately to stress their students out. 

The partner project incident happened to me in a history class Junior Year. My partner was a notorious burnout drug addict who just didn’t care, and try as I might to save the project it wasn’t enough. I ended up with an F and had to retake the class in night school the next year. Partner projects are a special kind of evil. I don’t know why the teacher who graded this found that so funny. 

I was correct that GPAs don’t matter in college, but when I wrote this I still didn’t realize just how meaningless they were. Is my life better right now because I got an A in English 20 years ago? Is my life worse because of the F I got in History Junior year? NO. My grades were generally pretty good. I ended up with a Master’s Degree, a huge student loan debt I’ll never pay off, and I can still only get hired for barely above minimum wage. I would be in the exact same position now if I had just stopped after High School, except without the debt. 

“Best years of my life”, ha! I stand by what I said there. My best years were either late childhood ages 9 to 11, or my early-to-mid 20s. My worst years were Middle School, and High School was only marginally not as awful.