I'm a Senior this year. I'm supposed to be the role model, showing everyone in their Freshman year that it is possible to survive through high school, even through IB. I am a living example of the success of backwards living.
Giving Sophomores tips for living through a year in Dr. M's Chemistry class, teaching Juniors how to battle through Mr. B's English class and come out on top with a B.
National Honors Society, which I joined for college and for a cord at graduation, wants me to tutor all grade levels in Spanish, too. I'll be the guiding Senior helping Freshmen and Sophomores and Juniors learn Spanish, teaching them the songs and the rhymes and the tips that got me through Sra. S's and Srita. R's and Sr. C's classes, and pass the IB Spanish Exam with a 6 out of 7.
The IB test was preceeded by Sr. C's class, preceeded by Srita R's, preceeded by Sra. S's, preceeded by my eighth and seventh grade Spanish teachers, preceeded by middle school and elementary school Spanish and finally by my Kindergarten classroom, which had the colors labeled in Spanish in friendly letters on the wall.
A prime example of the success of living backwards.
And I still have all my goals for good grades in my final year of high school, graduating with an IB diploma, and getting into a sweet undergrad college or university...
But people ask me if there is a real point in going to a super-solid undergrad school: Everybody says that graduate is all that matters. But here is where I am incapable of living backwards: lately I have no idea what I want to finally study, or even what I want to finally
do.What the heck am I going to do with myself - when I'm in the "real world?" I hate that phrase - the "real world."
When I was in middle school I thought the idea utterly ridiculous, as though I were living in some parallel universe and I didn't have problems to solve or work to do, as though everything else in the world were not my problem somehow. So whatever hurricanes were destroying homes in New Orleans, whatever wars were being fought, I didn't have to care. I thought, How the hell is that fair? How is that right? It's my world too! Everyone is ruining it! How is this not my problem? I live in the "real world!"
Now, however, I understand it more. I have learned that life in the "real world" means, to a certain extent, a life lived
backwards.
I'm going to have to live someplace and get to other places. Which means I'll need a) a place to live and b) a car or something. To get those, I'll need a job, which requires skills, which require training, and all that revolves around getting hired in the first place. Getting hired in the first place takes getting hired previously, which requires getting a degree, which requires going to grad school. That can't happen until I go undergrad someplace, which can't happen until I apply, which can't happen until I turn my life into a series of numbers and short sentences that can be quickly analyzed and tossed onto one pile or the other.
I feel that, at some point, we members of the "real world" all start living life backwards.
Think of when you used to live life forwards.
In elementary and middle school, you were going to be a fireman or a veterinarian or a fairy princess. And that was that. You learned multiplication and division and cursive because the nice tall lady in the pretty blouse told you to, and you played kickball and four-square and hopscotch and Groundies, and some day you were going to be a fireman. And that, easily enough, was that.
But then your teachers began living the year backwards: preparing you for the CSAPs or preparing you for middle school, and then you started being told why you should get good marks then and there: it would benefit you
down the road: in the "real world." So you knew you should go to college after high school after middle school after fifth grade after fourth after third after summer break. But someday, you would be a fireman. Maybe not a fairy princess. But a fireman.
Even as you lived life with the progression of time the way we experience it - forward - you always had your eyes set on the distant future, and so essentially you were living life backwards. Anytime you decided to stop studying for an algebra test to play outside, you lived forwards; every time you failed the test and were berated by your parents, you learned to live backwards again.
Eventually, maybe Freshman or Sophomore year in high school, you learned how to live neither completely backwards nor completely forwards, or to live, as it were, backwards and forwards at once. You put off studying for your algebra test to play
football outside, according to a schedule allowing you three hours a day, three days a week, of football. Living somewhat forwards. But if you did well enough, you could get C.A.S. hours towards your IB diploma, or trophies, or your picture in the paper, or a girlfriend, or something to put on your college resume. Living backwards.
And eventually, you got to where I am right now: Senior year. You've made it this far, this was always a hurdle you knew you'd have to leap over; now you are the shining example of how successful living backwards can make someone.
So here I am. I am neither a fairy princess nor a fireman, even though I learned cursive, even though I have surpassed the earthly bounds of multiplication and am moving on to calculus. But here is the problem with achieving the goal for which you've been living backwards all this time: I don't know where to go now.
My equivalent of the fairy princess seems just as far away and dreamily unobtainable: a schoolteacher? And what grade? And what level? And what classes? And where? And: children of your own? How many? Who will their father be? Where will you live?
Too many questions! Can't I live forwards? Can't I take my time?
I overschedule myself a lot. My forwards is so full most of the time that the only way I can make it through the week is by looking ahead to the weekend. To get to Saturday I have to get to Friday, which means surviving Thursday, Wednesday, Tuesday, and Monday.
I want to wrap this up with a brilliant idea of how we should all live life forwards, but I would be a hypocrite to do so. I like overscheduling myself until I cry. It's almost another hobby at this point. So this rant is as much a lecture to myself as to anybody else.
I know a few people who are very very good at living forwards. I often wish I could be more like them - they are very relaxed people with a lot of free time to sit. The little time I spend sitting down I fill with knitting, drawing, writing, reading, felting, painting... blogging. I suppose I try to be everywhere and everything at once, because I feel that life is so short that I'll never be able to do all I want to do - living backwards from my very
death.I need to breathe. I need to learn from others how to mete out my time so I don't exhaust myself, because if I live a long, stressed out life, who wins? I'm only human, after all, and humans, while stuck in the stream of time, have the ability to reflect and look ahead - and I think that to a certain degree, living backwards and forwards at once can be sitting still and taking in a beautiful fall afternoon.
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