By McKenna Renier

High School is important… to a teenager? Unheard of. Listen we’ve all been through the, “I hate school stage” but what good has that really done for you?

I hate to tell you this, but whether you like school or not, you’re forced to be here anyway.

After we’ve all come to the realization that you will be at school even if you’d rather be watching grass grow, let’s all just take a second to think of situations where school should be taken advantage of.

You’re in class wasting your time thinking about how awful school is. Meanwhile, you’re still in the class and nothing has changed. Why would you waste your time learning absolutely nothing when you could be expanding your knowledge? Okay, you might be right: you probably will never use the quadratic formula if you’re planning on being an NHL player. Whether you plan on using any of the skills you learn in school or not, you might as well take advantage of the time and resources you have at your disposal and make this time worthwhile.

School teaches you many things besides what an electron or an adverb is. In high school you learn how to react to real-world situations. Going to a public school, you do not have the ability to filter out any unwanted students. You’re pretty much stuck with a wide variety of people, any of whom you may not particularly care for. As a student, you’re forced to work with people you don’t like or who you have nothing in common with. These situations of dealing with people who you don’t exactly like and still being productive is a skill that will help you excel in the workplace.

Do you realize how truly fortunate we are as a country to have the education that we do? We complain about standardized testing and homework on weekends while kids in poorer countries and areas of the world have no schooling at all. Those kids dream of being able to read and write, to learn, and to make something of their lives besides trying to survive until tomorrow. We have a terrible case of “first-world problems” and need to take advantage of every opportunity that this country has given us to grow our minds.

The point to all of this is so the next time you sit in class hating the world because you’re deprived of being complacent with an underdeveloped mind, you’ll remember to look at school in a different, more positive way. After all, you’re going to have to be here anyway.