Senior Opinions

Remember high school? Sitting for hours in tiny desks. Learning things that you can't recall anymore. Waiting for the last bell. Good times. I've been out of high school for almost 5 years ::gasp:: and couldn't be happier. I hated high school. I thought it was boring. I didn't fit in. I didn't have to study. I yearned for the outside world and didn't see the importance of "blooming where I was planted." The thing is, I see myself in a lot of my students. They're smart, they're unmotivated by the present and they think that life after high school holds all the answers. Oh, and they're first generation college students, like me. I got through university by the skin of my teeth (honestly! compared to what I should have/could have). I hope they achieve more.

Anyway, today my apathetic teenagers got excited. Don't get me wrong, everyone participates in class, but it's usually after I do a song and dance routine to get their attention. Today even the most shy students talked about abortion, immigration, gay marriage, military power, healthcare and taxes. I was floored. I've never seen them so willing to talk. Granted, I provoked them by being devil's advocate, but still! I was on cloud nine. What I did was give them a quiz to determine their U.S. political party. There were only three party options: Republican, Independent and Democrat. There were pockets of hardcore conservatives and some of their answers truly surprised me (about 80% of the kids favored a strong military!) but politically, most of them favored the Democratic party's politics. No big surprise there. Most of the students knew of B. Obama and H. Clinton but had no idea who the Republican hopefuls were. One student told me that the French news "is biased and only shows what they want us to know about." Hmm, sounds like a great description of most news sources! I digress.