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Work to Live
Friday, February 27, 2009 @ 1:35 PM

Misdirected focus on paperwork, on procedures, and on bureaucracy frustrates teachers and fails to give children the education they need. - Christopher Bond

My life is presently revolving around all the paperwork. I literally want to die because of it, and the only way to escape writing this paper is either to fail miserably or die happily. I feel seriously suicidal at times, times which last for just about thirty seconds, but the grimness stays with me forever. I can't live well because of this paper for English, and even if we, the students, were given time to write it—and I know it was time I should have spent on actually writing it—it's just not fair.

It's not fair that this paper is robbing me of life, life that I should be spending on listening to music or playing the piano, watching monochrome pictures and reading Jane Eyre, not because they don't demand anything, but because they let me live life the way I want to. It's a selfish personal wish, but how can anyone live if their focus is just to work? And just as importantly, how can anyone work if what they do hinders them from life?

I want to work to live, and not the other way around. But the way that the work is being presented to us in school feels as if we have to sacrifice living in order to succeed in our work. We have to sacrifice living because we can only succeed if we put away the things that make us feel alive—music, the piano, motion pictures, and books.

It's not fair that they give us methodical ways to work, because not everyone is the same. I just found out two days ago that I work better by not starting with a problematique, a thesis statement, objectives, and an outline. I want to write the actual paper first, because that way my thoughts are editable. I can see them on paper, and not just guess from a fifty-word sentence what I think these stories mean. Even if the paper doesn't make any sense at first, at least I can see what I actually want to say. It's easier to try to write the paper first than create an inference based on something we're not even too sure will work out—and then we're all gonna have to start over if it doesn't.

At least they could have just given their methods as guides, but we don't necessarily have to follow them or submit them. But again, the only way to succeed is to sacrifice the way we want to live. The way I wanted to live was my own way, but they tell you at the school that their ways are better, and since this is a fucking institution that has some of the highest standards at face value, and more significantly, an institution that indirectly tells you that you're stupid because of the numerical system of grading, you have to do it their way. Their way is how to get a grade, no matter what you want to do.

In this fucking institution, you're constrained to these things. It's like you're being tied to a pole and the only way to get out is by using their knife, when what you want to use are your teeth. It sounds stupid, but at least you get to try things your own way, live your own way. You're not shoved imperative worksheets to your face until you find out which way works better for you.

It's not fair that everything in this school makes you want to die, because all you live for is your work.