Fighting Boredom

Let's face facts. School is boring.

Maybe not everything. I, for instance, love my English class. But, other than that, I usually feel like I'm going to fall asleep.

I can't help it. Whether it's the tangent of a circle or the inside of a flower, it's just not interesting to me. Maybe to some, but not to me.

So, what do we do? How do we fight off this oppressive sense that we would rather be anywhere but here, in school? I think I've found the answer.

I love to learn about history, but taking notes is nobody's favorite thing to do. My history teacher will give us packets of notes that we have to highlight as she reads to us. It's the last class of the day, and it's extremely hard for me to focus. My foot taps, my mind wanders, and I want nothing more than to go home. But, today, I tried something new. And it worked.

About a page through our notes, I decided to try something. I made my own notes. As we were reading along, I underlined things that gave me thoughts, and wrote the thoughts down next to them. Some of them include:

Pirates of the Caribbean (East India Trading Company)

British pants (Ponce de Leon)

A mad face (African slave trade)

The song "The Age of Not Believing" (I thought I could probably fit in "The Age of Exploration")

That made class so much more interesting, thinking up what kind of weird connections I could make. But, if your class is so boring you can't even do that - I've got another solution.

The other day, I read the true story of a girl named Maggie, age 12, who lived in Uganda. She walked 7 miles every morning, and 7 miles home every night to get the kind of education we get in elementary school. But, soon, her single mother couldn't afford to send her to school anymore, and any dreams she had of a career or rising above her situation were crushed.

I don't think that we, in America, truly understand the value of our education, how lucky we are to be able to learn what we can learn for free.

As I sat in Geometry today (which is in no way interesting at all), I kept reminding myself that kids in Africa would give up a limb for this class. That kept me paying attention. I realized how selfish I'd been in the past, wishing I could go home and get on Facebook, when some kid in Africa was wishing he could be where I was - school.

Just thinking about how many children would give up their homes for an education like mine, really made me focus, and really try to enjoy my schoolday.

I suggest you try it. We, as a whole, need to realize how lucky we are to have school.