My School Situation

Sitting down somewhere, reading this, you're probably wondering why the hell I'm telling you about my schooling situation. It's not exactly the most riveting of stories nor is it important to you at all. But in writing on this Internet thingy, I'm going to assume that's what important to me is worth hearing. =)

School has changed my life, probably forever. I've always hated High School, a lot. It never made sense to me, it was a microcosm of everything that's wrong with society. I hated the concept of working for a grade rather than working towards knowledge. I hated the huge pressure to conform. You know, most people think that they are their own person and that they stick out, but most of the time, they are flattened out by the juggernaut which is high school. And its a testimony to their idiocy and complete lack of self-perception that they feel like individuals after they've been raped by pedagogical conformity. You know, most of the time, I like to imagine myself as being an individual, as something/someone (not sure yet if we're things or ones) that can think for myself and isn't forced to my knees by school and an addiction to consumption.

But then I realize that no matter what I think, I'm still impacted by things that go on around me. And I don't know if I should be happy about that or sad.

You see, my entire life I grew up in California; I lived in a city which ranked on the Top 10 list for the most violent crime in the nation. I knew life there, and I knew what I hated about it and what I loved about it. But then, at the end of 10th grade, I made the decision to move. Not just out of Stockton or California, but out of America. I decided to go to India. O.o. I don't know why I did. I just knew that there was a boarding school nested in the Himalayan foothills that wanted me there. So I decided to fuck it all and go.

And I'm so damn happy that I did. I can't say that my school is immune to the ravages of Western culture...but there are some kids who have changed my perception of the world. The kinds of friends I've made here are the only kinds I ever want to have. The kind of people who would leave their country to come to India of all places are the kind of people worth knowing. I've met people who have demolished my ideas of religion and forced me to reconstruct them myself. For example, this staff member named Caleb is a hardcore jesus-lover. We had a few talks about religion and I realized that I was pursuing everything the wrong way. Not really because of what he said, but because of what I thought in my head after he said it. I realized I wasn't happy with my religion so I did several months worth of research and rebuilt my ideas up from scratch. Now I'm a Taoist. I'm a Buddhist. I'm a Pagan. I'm a Sikh. My idea of religion is built up from those four beliefs and it's working damn well for me.

And I don't know if any of that would have ever happened if I hadn't decided to go chill in the Himalayas.

That was too long...