I decided to enroll at The VFS the same day I found out about it. My dad had recently visited the school (for his own reasons) but had yet to tell me about his trip. A few days later I came home from high school in a complete depression, complaining about everything I could wrap my lips around. I was only hoping for some sympathy and commiserating, but instead my father offered up the fact that he had just been to a school where the students duct taped their butts to chairs. My initial reaction was that he was telling me this to make me feel better. At least at Cleveland High they didn’t make you tape your ass to the chair and walk around like idiots.
“Yeah, and the kids can do whatever they want. A group of boys wanted to do this so they spent the morning taping themselves up. Then they all went outside to play this weird game of dodge ball and came inside for story time- and all on their own will! The teachers weren‘t in charge of them at all.”
“Wh-what?” I whimpered, breaking out of my sad act long enough to fully understand what he was saying. He described everything he had learned that day about this magical place- how the kids vote on every rule of the school during these big weekly meetings, how there’s no set curriculum for any age group, how there are no grades or mandatory anything- except clean-up.
“But, is this like…a real school? Who are these people?” I learned the phrase alternative education for the first time and what it takes to go there: nothing. All you have to do is apply, he explained. There was nothing special about these kids, except that they didn’t want to be in public school. “Would you like to see it?” he asked.
We turned the car around (we were driving around during this whole conversation) and went into an area of town that I had never frequented. There on the side of the dirty, loud road, sat my future. The building was closed for the day, but we parked the car and looked in through the fire exit window. I could see the hallway and the fun artwork on the walls, the community bulletin board and a poster for some up coming concert. Even in the darkness, I could see that the place was softer, friendlier, not as sterile and unwelcoming as the schools I had been in.
By the time we had arrived home, it was pretty much decided that I should be transferring there. As soon as possible, if we could help it. That evening we made blueberry pancakes and discussed my future, my expectations as great as Pip’s in the Forge. It had taken all of an hour to completely convert me to alternative education. I began reciting the same speech I make to this day, comparing all that I didn’t get in standardized school (another new word) to all that one could gain from going alternative. I get pompous when I get excited and my speech was about as opinionated as they come. Obviously this newfangled form of schooling was far superior to the crap I was then immersed in. From what I had heard, it was a night and day difference.
I flipped two pancakes in the sizzling pan. “And I can make pancakes everyday!” I proclaimed loudly. “I’ll make pancakes everyday for breakfast instead of doing English class. It’s like, I’ve already read that book anyway and the essay they wanted me to turn in had to be about how much I liked it. I hate that book! I don’t need to take that English class, I already know how I feel about this book and I don’t like it. Why do I have to sit there for fifty minutes while the teacher talks about things I already know. It’s a waste of my time. No more! Instead, I’m going to make pancakes!”
My smile beamed brighter than the sizzling oil. I had found my way out of something that I hadn’t realized I needed to escape. Now it all made sense. Why didn’t everybody know about this free schooling idea?
I still feel bad for my mom about this. She came home from work and there I was, greeting her with the news that I was leaving public school for some alternative school. I didn’t know it at the time, but the terror I saw in her eyes was her reliving her own horrible experience with free school. “Are you sure?” she asked, “do you really think that’s the right choice for you?” But she had heard me complaining for the past two months. She knew that I came home chanting quietly “four more years, four more years,”
as if that little assurance was all that kept me going. Her next question needed a bit more of an answer.
“What does it cost?” Uh. I hadn’t asked that question yet myself. We turned to my dad who sat at the table in front of a pile of pancake triumph. He swallowed loudly and said, “Well, I’m not sure, but we can talk to them.”
And that’s what we did. There was no more reasoning with me that evening. I was still on a high that even my mother couldn’t bring me down from and I my mouth still hadn’t run down its supply of babbling. I had the application printed out immediately (including a second copy for my best friend who also hated Cleveland, because it was obvious to me that once he heard all of this too, he would be leaving with me. Of course, he didn’t come with me and thought I was making a bad decision. We had a falling out that year and stopped speaking. I recently heard that he’s since left Cleveland to attend a different alternative school with a half-time ‘free’ model. I can’t help but feel slightly inflated. Funny enough, my other best friend from that time thought I was making a terrible decision as well. She’s made fun of my school for years and everything ’alternative’ about it, and yet when it was time to go to college, she ended up at Evergreen College, the most free-school-y of all well-known colleges. So…I think I win.)
I ended up only attending one more day in public school, and it was the longest day of my life. I remember every second I spent in that building on my last day, each one more painful and pointless than the last. I kept wondering what the kids at free school were doing right then. Probably something amazing. Gluing themselves to walls? On a thrilling, spontaneous field trip? In the kitchen making pancakes?
The next day I got join them. It’s been a blur ever since.
Time flies when you’re having fun, but time also flies when you’re on your own schedule. Aside from isolated moments throughout the years, the only distinct and slowed down memories I have are of my first few hours there and the last few that I’ve spent. As soon as I return, those last couple hours will replace the others. I think that’s because I was really waiting for something to happen on my first day. I showed up with a backpack full of notebooks, pens, and books that I might need, learning soon after that I didn’t need anything at all. I arrived promptly at eight o’clock like all kids do on their first day of free school before they learn what optional hours truly means. No students really show up until nine thirty or ten (or ten thirty for the teenagers) when morning meeting starts and you’re sort of expected to make an appearance. Just because the building’s open from eight in the morning until four, doesn’t hold any bearing on when people are actually present.
I sat and read my book in the living room, probably fooling myself into believing that this was a naturally quiet atmosphere. Then when it was time for morning meeting, I got to meet my peers. They sat around the Room C couch circle, completely unaffected by the new face in their group, like a new transient in the camp. The meeting ended and they were still there, just sitting. Some drifted off, some played guitar and chatted about nothing academic. I was really confused. I wanted to text my best friend and tell him about what was going on, but I wasn’t sure if cell phones were allowed (he would have his on him because like most teens, he didn’t mind breaking the public school rule of no cell phone use. I always did mind, but I had a suspicion that this was different here. I couldn’t just pull it out though, in case it wasn’t allowed, and I wasn’t getting in trouble on my first day. They might send me back to that hell hole.) “Are we allowed to use our cell phones during the day?” I asked the group. A few sets of eyes rolled back. “Chyeah,” one girl replied before returning to her guitar. I looked to my left and saw a girl seated at a computer checking her Facebook account, with head phones plugged in to her ears and head bobbing to the beat. Clearly, technology use was not an issue here.
The next hour was really slow, as I didn’t know what to do for the first time ever. There was no class being offered at that time for Room C kids and I didn’t know anyone, so starting some kind of activity seemed too far out of my comfort zone. I sat at a table and doodled in my old science notebook. The clock ticked by far too slowly as I wondered when something was going to happen. A girl breezed in, saw me seated all alone, and pulled up a chair. Her name was Ann and she was an intern there. She asked me all about how I had found the school, my educational past, and what my interests were. I explained that I really enjoyed theater, especially of the musical variety. That was my big thing. Oh, she exclaimed. Had I heard of the Broadway musical Spring Awakening? It just so happened that she personally knew two of the original cast members and had seen the show a couple of times.
This just happened to be my favorite musical EVER and she had absolutely, unknowingly hit the nail on the head for my ‘interests.’ We then got to talking about theater and putting on shows and that’s how within my first three hours of being in free school, I was already planning my first school show.
After this point, I guess you can say I hit the ground running. I was amazingly lucky in that we had a student whose mom was a theater director in town and loved working with our students. She was already teaching a theater class when I enrolled and this became my favorite very quickly. She was behind doing a show that school year, but no one was sure what to do. We happened to be working on Shakespeare around that time and after an evening field trip to see an excellent production of “The Merchant of Venice”, we sat over plates of pancakes at the local all-night pancake house and decided that we needed to do Shakespeare. Something kid friendly, like A Midsummer Night’s Dream. So that became our new project. We assigned production jobs and cast the show while sitting at the table that night, and it took three months to get the show on its feet and presented to the community. I cast myself as Helena and became the director’s assistant, giving myself far more theater opportunity for the year than I would have had at Cleveland.
I attempted other theater productions throughout that first year, going as far as to recruit old friends from high school who wanted to help mount a show. Unfortunately, everything fell through and Midsummer was the only thing I’ve managed to get on its feet thus far. I would attribute all of that success to having incredibly supportive adult help. That’s not a bad thing though. It was an amazingly cute production, which is probably hard not to do when you have five year olds as fairies and a ten-year-old girl playing Puck. Just darling.
We had to get practically everyone in the school involved just to have enough actors to fill the cast. I managed to convince everyone except the skater teenage boys- they were too cool to join in. Only one of them (and he was only a part time group member anyway) agreed to play one of the lovers. I even got some staff members playing roles. Everything about the production was built from the ground up, like everything we do. We got parents and students to help with the set, costumes, marketing and everything. I never would have guessed that we could have pulled off such a nice looking show either.
It ended up being like a community theater production. It was free school quality, as it should be. The audience sat on picnic blankets arranged throughout our ‘forest’ (we have these large ugly pillars holding up the ceiling downstairs so we covered them with paper and called them trees.) We lit the entire set with twinkle lights, giving everything a warm, pixie-ish glow. The Shakespeare itself was made rather free school-itself. We gave our five-year-old fairies one line each which they delivered with adorable shyness, one after the other. Puck and Oberon (a lovable staff member) sat behind a tree while watching Titania, eating popcorn and joking the whole time.
There were some pitfalls while trying to put it on. When a light caught a plastic plant on fire during a dress rehearsal, the first boy to notice was too unsure of how to politely interrupt the rehearsal. He sat with his hand raised for far too long before finally saying, “Um, the plant’s on fire?” The onstage and offstage meltdowns only increased as the performance date grew closer and I was so worried for the group of shy students that we had cast (they’re hard to avoid at free school). But they all did it, and everyone was so proud. Regardless of acting ability or quality of the production, it was an amazing show just because we did it. I think that’s the best thing I’ve helped do during my time at The VFS.
Not long after I started there, I figured out that I could use my new freedom to get out into the world. I contemplated getting a job or an internship, and when an interning position specifically for a teen presented itself at a local theater, I jumped on that opportunity. At the time, I was the only student who had an internship somewhere, though there have been others throughout the years. I thought I was the coolest thing, going out into the world and working somewhere instead of being at school two mornings out of the week. I didn’t even have to do any make-up work for the hours I missed at school. Absolutely amazing.
That was the perfect thing for me at the time. It felt like a cage had been lifted on my existence. I was always one of those children who would be dropped off in the morning for school and watch my mom drive off down the street to her downtown job and real life. I wanted that so bad- I wanted to go with her, not only because she was my mother, but because she had the option of leaving while I had to be where she left me. For a “get-up-and-go” child as my parents say, this was a really harsh reality (as a baby before I could talk, I would drag my coat across the floor and drop it at their feet, like a dog with his leash. I needed to get out of the house and go. Anywhere.) I knew that my mom had a job that she had to report to and responsibilities there, but part of me believed that if she truly wanted to, she could just go. Also, even if she stayed, she was in the coolest part of town so her day would be exciting. I still get choked up seeing downtown through the eyes of my nine year old self; truly, it was the ultimate hope in ‘getting away from where I am now’ and represented the perfect day.
I was surprised when this yearning to escape with my mother every morning followed me all the way into high school. From the front doors of the building, I could see the tops of the southern skyscrapers peeking out over the trees. There was a busy highway directly next to the school that led onto a bridge and over to the promised land. She would leave me on those front steps, turn onto this road and go off to her exciting life while I got to stare out at these skyscrapers from my third story classroom, far more engrossed in what was happening off in the city than on biology. Even though The VFS is located about as far away from downtown as possible while still being in Portland, it was just as exciting to take the long bus ride across town and be on my own time. Having the internship in the trendiest part of downtown only added to the thrill as I could never quite believe that this was my life now. I could be out exactly where I wanted to be on a Tuesday morning, get a cup of coffee or go to the library if I wanted, and then leisurely return to school where my tardiness wasn’t frowned upon at all. “What did you do this morning?” they’d ask. I’d rattle off all of my humble yet personally exhilarating adventures. “Cool!” they’d say, “Glad you had fun. We’re about to have a history class. Want to join us?” And I was always so much more willing and excited about whatever classes were happening because of my ability to go when I needed to.
Something really important that free school allows for is an even mix of life and school. As a student, school generally captivates your entire existence unless there are other drastically large things going on for you at home. For the average kid, you give your entire day and then most of your free time towards school work which isn’t always an enjoyable prospect. I’ve been able to take some of that time and direct it towards my own interests. I learned so much through my internship that I had for a year and a half and I managed to do that during school hours. I never had a lot of homework so my evenings and weekends were never consumed by another entity. I could even leave early if I wanted to make dinner for my family or get chores done, or I could come early to attend a special lecture happening at school, or however I wanted my days to look. School was no longer the foundation of my existence which made me like it a hell of a lot more.
The cool thing now is that theater kind of is my life outside of school. I’ve been using my free time wisely and seeing shows, taking classes, auditioning for things in town and having a blast. I wouldn’t be able to focus so much of my energy on the thing I truly love if I didn’t have the freedom that I have now. I mean, I spent all summer writing this book as a school project and that was of my own free will. I said I would complete this assignment because this is something I wanted to do and how I wanted to show that I was ready to graduate. My friends spent the summer reading books that they weren’t interested in and writing papers about them that they have no more investment in than for the grade. I willingly put so many more hours into this because this is something that I had the drive and passion to do. This is my baby. I know people say that you shouldn’t have a baby while being a teenager, but I don’t think they accounted for things like this book.
If I’m not doing theater, I’m dancing. Yeah, I know, I’m that kind of artsy teenage girl. Around the same time that I started my internship, I also got myself a job at the local public elementary school teaching an after school jazz class. My dad had a lot to do with that acquisition (he might work at that school and teach an after school class himself). It was my first time being on someone’s payroll and the $100 I earned was the most amazing wad of cash that I’ve ever had in my wallet. At the time, I didn’t give a lick about being back in a standardized school in order to earn money. I would probably care nowadays, but even then I don’t know. The only problem is I’ve stopped dancing since then because the dance classes I was taking were no longer quite doing it for me.
One really awesome thing about the middle school I went to was that instead of a PE class, every student had to do a mandatory year of dance. The teachers were fabulous and the program was wonderful and I miss it dearly. A few years later I was itching to get back into my regular dance class routine, so I signed up with a local private arts high school that allowed outside students to take their after school programs. It was working well, it felt good, all until they asked me for something that I just couldn’t deliver anymore. It wasn’t a dance maneuver that I was no longer able to perform, it was a homework assignment. I hadn’t known this when I had signed up, but a part of the class was turning in weekly essays about various dance videos or reflections on class or whatever prompt they wanted. This…this, wasn’t okay with me. I was in a mood change for the worst during the time, fighting every form of standardized school that came my way. I never brought this up with the teacher (who didn’t know I was even in this crazy alternative school) and I just never turned in any assignments. I was only slightly shaken by that close call. Then the grade report came. My mom called me downstairs one afternoon to report that I had failed a class. I laughed. “What are you talking about?” I asked, expecting a joke. “The dance school sent me your grade for the year and you got a D. She says she didn’t completely fail you because you worked so hard in class.” We stared at each other. The panic I had always felt towards school work that I had worked so hard to suppress for the past two years came bubbling up in my stomach. Then I remembered I no longer had a grade point average or permanent record that this could It surprises me to say that I didn’t have to get all of my dancing kicks out only outside of school. During my first year, it became incredibly fashionable to go swing dancing, of all things. I already knew how from my years dancing in middle school, but everyone else had a year-long learning curve that they took with determination and patience. This all started with one of our favorite staff members was trying to impress a lady friend from far away. He came to school saying that he had a month to learn how to swing dance before she visited and expected him to be an expert. Therefore, he was going twice a week and would anyone like to join him? Heck yes. And because of his popularity, I wasn’t the only one who responded that way.
In fact, he managed to get the most pretentious kids to go, all loaded up in his car talking about how much better swing dancing is than any other kind of dance and how they were on the cutting edge of this cool trend. I went with them and was amazed to discover these swing dancing venues across town. It became a weekly field trip to go down and learn the craft for a few hours during the evening. It was a grand time and soon we were all practicing throughout the day, swinging circles around the stage in the basement. Activities like that are always the most fun at free school. We could be sitting around the couches, chatting and slightly bored, and someone will say, “Hey, wanna go swing dance for a while?” “Sure, I don’t have a class until one!” And then we’ll all troop downstairs. Spontaneous bouts of dancing are the icing on the cake of life.
Those seem to be a trend at the VFS, the spontaneous bouts of dancing, I mean. I have some lovely memories of us all shaking our bon-bons during some serious bonding time. The music of Lady Gaga especially has a place in our hearts. The staff in Room A will sometimes turn on play lists of her stuff (the tamer songs, of course) and lead the group in a raucous dance party. When you hear the funky beats bouncing down the hall, you assume it’s coming from Room C, and are always shocked to see the little tykes in Room A jumping up and down to the beat (they’re also huge fans of Ke$ha and Katy Perry). There was also the time during a school sleep over when Jackson brought in a Jazzercise video and got everyone to come dance/workout with him. Everyone came, parents, staff, and students, to participate just for the hilarity of it. It was a room packed to the brim with a bunch of people in pajamas “moving those hips and tightening that core! Now even bigger- five, six, seven, eight!” Another time, the Room C staff told us that we would be learning how to dance Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” for our Wednesday Fun-day activity. We then spent the next hour and a half watching the music video and how-to videos on Youtube before attempting it as a group. What made that day so much fun was that so many people were resistant to participating, and yet, who can sit out when Michael Jackson’s gyrating hips are compelling you to dance along? By the end of our session, everyone in the room was completely gung-ho about doing it and loving every second. Almost as good as the time when we made a Queen Tribute Air-band. Almost.
affect. “I don’t think I’m taking this class next year,” I replied, and walked back upstairs.
My experience at the school has been influenced a lot by the time I’ve actually been off campus. I find that the most liberating part of the whole ‘free school’ concept. Of course, with my ever-expanding need to go, the magic of hanging around Portland soon wore off and I needed a new world to explore. I began using the off campus privilege to my advantage by going as far off campus as physically possible, like to The Mediterranean and other such places. My family’s always been big on traveling and when a family friend suggested we start taking trips to places like Italy and Greece, I said “sure, I’ll be right over!” I have no regrets about taking weeks off from my school education to go traipse around Greek Islands and Venetian canals. I will always argue that I got some of the best history lessons of my life there. Those were weeks when I had to ask myself what I would really be missing out on anyway back at school. But it was so amazing to be able to just pick-up and leave without it interfering with school. A novelty in and of itself.
And hey, my next few trips were at least to schools. As soon as I broke the mold and started traveling during school time, I found as many ways to make that happen as possible. There were trips to my grandparents and long weekends with my parents but once college started looming on the horizon, it became the ultimate excuse. There were college visits to make in New York City and Los Angeles and all up and down Oregon. I also had these wonderful connections with people at other free schools around North America, so why not go spend some time visiting those as well? You know, to see how other people run their schools…and stuff? That’s how I ended up spending time at Windsor House and The Brooklyn Free School. It’s true, we’ve spent a lot of money to not send me to school over the years, but the experience was worth it. We bought me freedom and an education.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I shouldn’t be paying for schooling and traveling at the same time, however, so I’ve decided to simply end my time at school early to fully pursue the other. Since staying with people at other free schools worked so brilliantly this past year, my goal is to graduate a semester early from The VFS and ‘free school-hop’ across Europe. I’m tremendously excited to see other schools and learn as much as I can about alternative education so I can hopefully be a part of it for the rest of my life. I believe there’s so much students can gain from being a part of this model, I’m just not sure that every aspect works or that I’ve necessarily seen the version that makes the most sense. That’s why I want to look at other institutions, find out how they differ, hear how they work (or don’t), and then maybe- just maybe- start a school… of my own… someday? I’m slightly embarrassed to admit this after talking so much about some of my issues with my own school. We might not have everything right (even though we do have a lot) and someone else might. And if they don’t, there’s always room for another school to try and find a better balance. It’s like evolution, each new mutation and species has got to be a step up from the last, even if it’s not the end product. It doesn’t matter if there are still going to be hundreds of variations after yours, the next one will always be slightly better. That’s how you make it to a more perfect world. The best part of having so many schools in existence and so many being created is that there are so many more options for students to try. No model will work for everyone, so having soooo many different versions out there can only be a huge step forward in the education of society. Eventually, the standard won’t be public school. The standard will be every proven model under the sun operating in cohesion with one another.
That got really preach-y really fast. We must be nearing the end of the book.
I have friends who, after figuring out the basics of what my education entails, really want to know what I actually do during a day. This question always stops me cold. “Um, what do you mean?” “You know, what do you actually do during the day if you don’t have to do anything?” “I-I told you.” They’re never satisfied with that. I go right back into explaining my self-inflicted work load and how I’m usually hunched over a text book or two, piecing together an academic education. This part, they especially don’t understand. It’s like doing homework, I say. But instead of just doing the set of problems assigned, you make your way through the entire textbook. I do this on my own while everyone around me raises hell. There are one or two other kids who might have quiet independent work-type projects in front of them, but mostly it’s wild crazyness.
This behavior made me kind of a loner. Except with the other quiet kids; we became friends and now I invite them on the trips I take away from school, since they’re just as thrilled to leave that noise pit as me. On days when I wasn’t out of the country, I would go off campus to coffee shops and get work done there. By a Thursday afternoon when you’ve already had three and a half days of energy shoved in your face, sometimes the only place you can really be is somewhere far, far away. I still want to get things done and work in my textbooks, but I just have to take the whole operation somewhere else. Even loquacious patrons and shrill espresso machines can’t out-do with “ PENIS AND BOOBS” in your ear all day long.
Actually, coffee became a big part of my life these past couple of years. It started in high school when I was already pulling late nighters to finish the homework given out to a first quarter freshman. I began frequenting a coffee shop near my old high school during lunch period and my addiction slowly grew from there, even after it was no longer ‘necessary’ to finish my day. In fact, this book was written with a cup of coffee inches away from my hand. I’m lucky there hasn’t been a liquid-on-computer accident yet. It became my routine to walk to school and then relax with a cup of coffee. At my arrival time, there was usually not enough students present yet to take away from the peaceful tranquility of reading a novel with a morning cup of coffee in hand. This tradition became weirdly sacred to me and the foundation of my school day.
A lot of my activities are designed specifically for one person: internships, and working, and textbook studying, and writing, and generally being in my own world. I really worked hard to create that throughout my life. I made myself an outcast successfully and mostly enjoyed it. Sometimes it would strike me that I really had no friends outside of school, since most of my close buddies had dropped me when I dropped high school. I had one old, dear friend who I still saw, but we were never extremely close at any point. On any given day, I wouldn’t have any kind of meaningful or elongated conversation with anyone in my age range. I spent all day ignoring my classmates and had no friends outside of school. This suited all of my school work and interests nicely, but the occasional nights when I’d go to sleep crying would concern me a little.
It was all starting to get to me in a very real way when I met all of the right people and my routine flipped. Sometimes I’d wonder if it was just me who put people off and didn’t deserve companions. I knew that it was just plain hard to make friends in a small community and if I wanted to, I’d have to go out into the world in some way (that‘s exactly what I did, as well). But still, everyone has to wonder about that sometimes. I’ve heard that good people naturally attract other good people. This brings me heart years later when I look at the wonderful, inspiring people I’ve surrounded myself with and my previous concern is put to rest.
I’ve even began to accept my fellow students for the individuals that they are. I realize that part of my avoidance of them was just an age issue that I’ve managed to grow out of. I’m no longer so stuck up or inflexible or unwilling to deal with disagreements and people who don’t share my views. It’s not a mini utopia in Room C yet by any means, but we’re nicer to each other than we were even a year ago. Being overly angry was a fad. Just like swing dancing.
When you’re all grown up and ready to move on up in the world, we ask our students to complete a graduation process. This says that you believe that you’re ready to go on to college, or get a job, or basically become an adult, and you’re willing to show this by completing a set of individualized challenges that test your ability to reflect on and understand where you’re coming from and where you’re going. Anyone could begin their graduation process at any time, but since the staff vote yay or nay on whether they think you’re ready to start, it’s pretty unlikely that the opportunist eight year old will make it very far. This is what we’ve designed to replace the idea of a regular graduation in a standardized school. I think ours is a bit more thought out. And challenging. Just saying.
We don’t just want to send our students out into the big, bad world without any ceremony or recognition. We also didn’t want to ask nothing of them- after all, the world is big and bad. It’s beneficial for them to take at least a half a year and reflect on what they know and what they want to do with themselves once they’re gone. Now, I can’t verify this, but I’ve heard that in public school you only have to pass a couple of tests or show up to a certain amount of classes or something like that. Oh, and walk across a stage. Pooh-shah. How does that show you’re ready to act like an adult in your community?
A big time suck this past year has been my own graduation process. I’m a big kid and get to graduate from high school and go out into the world and be an actual-factual adult. I’m excited about it, too! Sadly though, graduating takes a hell of a lot of time. I keep wondering how I can get out of this massive workload, but it’s actually helping me know more about myself and grow as a person and all of that crap, so I suppose it’s a good thing. Whatever. It’s cutting into my reality TV time. Well, that’s when I work on it at home. It turns out the graduation process is an excellent thing to undertake during school hours because what else would you be doing? Sure, I suppose I have three hours to devote to collaging or emailing people or writing. Why not? Those sneaky staff members planned it that way, I can just tell. Tricky, tricky.
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