Saturday, March 28th, 2009
In my last post, I shared my anxieties of starting school. My first day was two days ago on Monday. Of course, it just HAD to be the Monday after Spring Break. Well, I thought I’d share how it went along with what I’ve learned.
School on Monday was … horrendous. I spent two or three hours trying to get admitted because the rehab I was at did not have a working fax machine. Therefore, they couldn’t get all my transcripts in. After three class periods later, I was off to class. My schedule had been established as two core classes: English III and Geometry and all the rest are electives: Study Hall, Student Aide, PE, Journalism and Orchestra. Since I’d been waiting so long, it was already fourth period. Off to geometry.
It went pretty bad. You know those classes where everyone picks on the teacher and on each other, are loud and in general just plain distracting? It was one of those classes. On top of everything else, I had no idea what the teacher was trying to teach because I didn’t pay attention to geometry prior to this school. That’s my loss.
Once I was put out of my misery and the bell rang, I went ahead to my next classes and lunch. I was lonely at lunch, but I survived. The next day was MUCH better.
First period, I had my first orchestra class in a VERY long time, but I think I sight-read the music pretty well. I got a disc on Friday to practice with so I can get the rhythms right. We’re playing pretty basic songs because for now I’m in the lowest orchestra, simply because I hadn’t auditioned for another one and we only have nine weeks left of school.
I had my ARD meeting on Tuesday in the morning and it turns out most of my credits transferred over. I was so happy, I probably could’ve cried. I am .5 credits away from officially being a junior and I plan on taking Distance Courses through Texas Tech while I’m in Ohio visiting my mom this summer. If I don’t go to Ohio, I’ll probably just take summer school at one of the local high schools.
Wednesday was a much better day, as was Thursday and Friday. I have officaliy completed my first week back at school. It’s going very well. I have a friend, who actually came over and we hung out on Friday. She’s good for me, so it’s okay.
I haven’t blogged in forever and for that, I feel sad. I hate to say it, but I feel like Delicate Melody is one of those things where I have a couple of great ideas, I find somewhere to host them, and then I just loose interest. Except I’m not so much loosing interest as I am confused about what I want to do with Delicate Melody and then there’s always the anxiety-provoking and cliché writer’s block. I have, however, been working on a research paper for English. It doesn’t have a name, but the basics of it is this: Find a thesis you want to write about concerning life and then back it up with a literary piece, a historical event, and a current event.
I have decided to write about how media affects our culture negatively. This is what I have so far:
Today’s media is cajoling our culture into a generation of hate, self-loathing, and utter filth. We are being bogged down and intoxicated by what media portrays the standards and morals of the “average” teenage American. We live in a world full of reckless choices: drinking and driving, drug abuse, risky sex and so on and so forth. Our generation today is suppised to lead our tomorrow. We live in such an economically and morally run down world where the average American is unhappy with their lives.
The media makes the people unhappy and live more chaotic lives than we would have left to our own devices. Tuesdays with Morrie is a book based n learning life’s lessons, Morrie, a man who died from ASL (or more commonly known as “Lou Gherig’s Disease”), touches on everal key points on living life and simply being human. Morrie was a sociology teacher at Brandeis University. He said before he passed that, “the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves.” (Tuesdays with Morrie pg. 42) Our culture is sick and the media is the root of our troubles.
Look around you and what do you see and hear? Weight loss commercials and advertisements, fad diets, plastic surgery, even diet pill advertisements. They say that there’s always room to improve here in America. That’s far from the truth. People should not change to fit American “standards and morals” to live a successful life. So many Americans struggle with body image.
….
My current even which is what I was working on when I stopped writing is Anorexia. i’ve struggled with eating disorders myself, so I know what it’s life to have poor body image and self-esteem. This is something I feel very strong about. And now that I’m on the other side of it, looking in, I realize that I was unhappy with myself not only because of the choices I made and consequences I faced, but also because of the media telling me what I should look like. All around me, there are models weighing under 100lbs, and here I am twice that, although I haven’t always weighed that much. In my addictions, I weight about 120lbs to 130lbs. Granted sobriety weight is a bitch, I would much rather be bigger than I was before and HAPPY, then utterly miserable and “skinny,” whatever that is.
My historical event for my research paper is “Shotgun Weddings”. When Bristol Palin was forced to hold hands with Levi Johnston at her mother, Sarah Palin, at the Repubican National Convention, something struck me. As I faced my consequences, now she must face hers. Pregnant at seventeen years old and now in a position where she was forced to become engaged, Bristol faces hard times. A “shotgun wedding” is defined as a marriage arranged by the woman and/or the woman’s family when the woman becomes pregnant. This relates to my paper because media and our culture believe that sex is glamorous. It’s fun and risky, therefore we should all do it. When really, people are ending up pregnant and with STDs. This is something I feel strongly about as well, simply because I’ve been in those kind of positions.
Sex is meant for two people who love each other, not for an adrenaline rush.
All in all… I think life is a learning process. Almost a trial and error thing. If something doesn’t work, do it differently next time. Obviously the drugs, cutting, and believe I was a fat monster didn’t work for me so now I have to work on living a happy, joyous, and free lifestyle. That means doing the next right thing and following what I am SUPPOSED to be doing it. It’s a hard path, but it’s not as hard as the other lifestyle I was living. Something I have to keep telling myself constantly is that the strong are those who change and get to the other side, not the ones that can go through things and then continue to live the same lifestyle. The weak are those who refuse… They refuse to change and their life is Hell.
Maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but I think I’ve finally beat my writer’s block. 
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Tags: americans, anorexia, anxiety, body image, Bristol Palin, culture, cutting, drinking and driving, drugs, eating disorders, english, geometry, hate, Hope, Levi Johnston, media, orhestra, research paper, risky sex, school, self-harm, self-injury, self-loathing, spring break, thesis, today's generation, tuesdays with morrie, writer's block