There's something I've been wanting to write about for a while now, because of the incredible life lessons I've learned from a sad experience.
But I'm having a really hard time putting into words how I feel, and telling the story without totally exposing people. I'm gonna try though, so here goes.
I've been feeling extremely disappointed about the way I ended high school. I hate that I'm going to look back at high school and my four almost all good years are going to be tainted by this horrible semester. It's really gotten me noticing others and how I treat them. People don't remember you for what you said, but how they made you feel, and I just really hope I never treat anyone like this.
One of my favorite teachers throughout all of high school completely turned on me just a few weeks before graduation. The only way I can think of to explain how it feels is heartbreaking. I don't know that I've ever been so disappointed in my life. For the most part, this teacher is a truly amazing lady. She genuinely cares about her kids and she always goes way out of her way to help me. But every once an a while (once or twice a term at the most) she'll just randomly get in a really bad mood and class kind of sucks, but I mean, that's understandable. Any woman has mood swings, especially one under the incredible amount of stress teachers go through. But for some reason, during the last few months of school her bad days came more and more often, until it basically sucked every day.
Then one day she just sort of snapped... She blew up at one of the sweetest girls in the class over something that really wasn't that big of a deal. So I decided I wanted to try to talk to her about what was going on. I explained the situation to my parents and some friends outside the class and came up with a game plan based on their advice and talked to her one day after school. She acted like everything was fine when I talked to her, but then the next day in class it was the same thing again, it was like this black pit that just kept snowballing uglier and uglier. This teacher would be in a pissy mood and then the kids would be rude back and not do what they were supposed to on purpose, then she would punish the kids and be even meaner and then the kids would just be even brattier! It was this vicious cycle, and it was really horrible to end what had been my favorite class that way. To make things worse, I found out that all the time and energy I dedicated to her program was for nothing. Each year and the end of the year she holds this banquet party to celebrate student's achievements and even though I did SO much for her program, including a really challenging job that brought me a ton of stress, I didn't get even a simple thank you from her. She also wrote the most un-personal short message in my yearbook "Alison- You've been fun in class. Hope you have fun at college, good luck with life, Ms. (I won't say her name)" I never thought a teacher could ever make me that upset.
Long story short, Senior ended up really crappy.
The thing I've learned from this depressing experience though, is to not depend so much on other people for my happiness. It's true that my teacher was really horrible to my class the last half of the year, and it's true that I was really disappointed, but I chose to be disappointed. I gave her the exact reaction that she wanted, (conciously or not) and she didn't deserve that. I have SO many things going for me right now, a fabulous family that loves me, my blessings and talents, and getting to go to college this upcoming fall. If I had spent my time focusing on the wonderful things in my life and not wallowing in despair, my year could've turned out totally different. That's why I think from now on, I'm going to focus on happiness, because being angry doesn't change them, it only affects me. It just isn't worth my time or energy to be mad.
