I received an assignment telling me to do nothing, easy enough; I would have probably done that anyway. The catch was, we had to reflect on it after. I had to be me and act like a smart ass, I planed on doing exactly what the project said, nothing. I drew some doodles and in huge print wrote, “nothing” where the reflection was support to be written. I showed some people around me, I though I would get a laugh or two, but I was completely wrong. I was called stupid and people looked at me with disbelief. In a primarily senior elective class, I was actually called stupid and other variations of that for not doing an assignment.
That was when I realized that I was going to do my own study. I was going to show people connected to Stevenson High School my assignment. I started by reading the assignment and then proceeding to show my friends, faculty and my parents my interpretation of the assignment. I sat back and listened to all the comments I got. The only people that actually laughed were my friends who know me and had to think it was a joke.
I continued to do this for the rest of the week. I soon found how interesting Stevenson’s culture is. People care more about grades than anything. In a Zen community, an acceptable response would be mine because their belief is that nothing exists. It’s said that once you can get past the illusions you see, you will be enlightened. Stevenson ain’t very Zen. Not once, did a student ask what class it was for or why I did that. They commonly asked about my saneness and if I cared. The thing that surprised me most was the next day, some people actually asked me what grade I got. Stevenson has taught us to be so competitive that we actually care about someone else’s grades so we can compare them to our ranking. High School may be teaching us book smarts and competiveness, but I wonder how those kids with a perfect GPA and high ACT scores do in real life.
Children that are neglected always end up not "normal." Normal meaning they go through the stages of life at a ordinary time. A neglected child might act more like a wild animal than a human. Walking and talking all might be very difficult tasks for a neglected child at the age of 8. Last night I volunteered in a soup kitchen in Uptown. As the huge crowd started to slow down, I had time to think about and talk to the guests that were there. I wondered what had happened that caused these people to be in the situation they were in. My teacher explained that there was a huge population of mentally ill people in uptown. The government cut funding for clinics, so the patients had no where to go but the streets. I wonder if anyone I saw last night was one of the patients. They were probably neglected because there families couldn't take care of them so they sent them to an institute. Some people at the soup kitchen had poor communication skills as well as poor motor skills. One man struggled to shake my hand after I had a pretty simple conversation with him. We just made normal small talk and then he had to go. The only thing that actually stuck in my head that he said was, "stay in school, you got your whole life to work." I wish I got to hear about his background. I often walk past homeless people without even giving them a thought. They actually might be more wise from living on the streets with the bare minimum than a person who has a PHD. I had an amazing experience in the soup kitchen and highly recommend everyone volunteering.
