Ridiculous Expectations

As a student who has just started my senior year of high school, I have definitely been bombarded with meeting and lectures about the upcoming school year. Expectations, expectations, each one of these lectures echo.  My pretentious college prep school just got a new principal, so obviously she had to give a speech to not only the whole school, but a specific one for the senior class. In a weird, ramble-y lecture, she cites random personal experiences as why she expects us to get a lot of sleep, function perfectly, and basically make her job super easy. Even though I know she is trying to be optimistic, she utilizes cheesy cliches to guilt trip students into staying at a school that could be a very detrimental and harmful environment for them. It’s frustrating because just by saying “I expect you to…” she can trash all of her responsibility as a principal. In the following lecture, the school did the same thing. The next someone needs help or fails, they could simply just place all the blame on the student. These people are being paid to run a school, but they aren’t invested in actually helping the students of the school. The only reason any of them have jobs is because of the students are willing to attend this school. It’s additionally even more frustrating that the administration expects so much of students, but doesn’t hold itself to the same regard, constantly letting down the students by cutting courses, teachers and funding, and refusing to help students deal with health problems, instead choosing to kick out the students.  I don’t really know how to fully express my frustrations, but it’s just very infuriating when a school promises things and constantly lets you down, but fully expects you to be accepting of their failures and still continue meeting their ridiculously high expectations.

Anxiety

School starts in two weeks and I’m sick to my stomach. I’m so anxious. The last two years went badly; what’s to say this year isn’t the same? I don’t want to constantly handle the pain, despair, stress and loneliness. I am freaking out.

I’ve always thought my anxiety was mainly social related but now I realize that I get anxiety over everything. Everything from things that could mean something to things that don’t even mean much at all fills me with fear.  Anxiety has been messing up my life in big ways and small ways. I’ve turned in many papers and important assignments weeks late which caused my GPA to suffer immensely. I’ve messed up friendships by taking too long to respond or by being too scared to be real with them. I remember I had a school sponsored overnight trip in Florida and it was going pretty well but one night, at 2 am, while everyone else was asleep, I was just having a panic attack by myself outside.

I know I need to take control. I just don’t know how.  A year ago, I tried medication, group therapy and individual therapy for my depression. They didn’t work. I put my all on the line and no one genuinely cared. It did more harm than good. I don’t want to go through that again. 

I have a theory that I don’t do enough different things with my life that’s why I get anxious because every little thing means that much more as compared to if I was a busy person and I did a lot of different things - I wouldn’t have time to be afraid of everything because I would be on to the next thing. Unfortunately, anxiety keeps me from doing things because I am super afraid and sick to my stomach. What a vicious cycle.