The Prison that I Miss so Much
From sixth to eighth grade I went to a Private Catholic School. Although it sounds bad, I probably spent the best three years of my life there. We had dress codes, a religion class, and all our classes were predetermined for us.
Everyone in the class hated the people who ran the school (The Principle, Vice-Prin., etc.) but we all loved our two main teachers. I had many friends there and we all stuck together. We hung out downtown together, we all sneaked out at 2 A.M. together, we even got in trouble together. There was a slight problem, the school was on Queen Anne Hill, and I live in the University district. So doing anything major required me spending the night at someone's house, and not everyone's parents were willing to have me over.
Then we Graduated...Well, I wasn't allowed to participate in the ceremonies (it was that dammed Principle fault) but I easily passed eighth grade so I came here to Roosevelt. Unfortunately, other than me, no one from my school came to Roosevelt and I lost contact with everybody. Now I get really sad and depressed whenever I think back to all the friends I left behind. Yet I don't want these memories to drift away simply because I feel sad. Who knows, I might somehow regain contact with everyone or I might find another group of friends.

Gossip
I don't hang around my neighborhood that much because there isn't anyone my age where I live. I spend a lot of time among adults. For this reason you might think that I don't experience gossip.
Last year, before I came to Roosevelt, I had spent pretty much all of my time among kids my age. I didn't gossip so I wasn't gossiped about. Yet there was a group of girls who did gossip, and hurt some people's feelings. In retaliation, the people that were gossiped about started gossiping. I got sick of it very quickly.
As I said earlier, I now spend most of my time with adults, and many of them are my friends. Some adults, though, haven't outgrown gossiping. I have a friend who recently started going out with a girl. He came to the Wizards of the Cost Game Center one day worried sick because he overheard a conversation between two people who were having a friendly conversation about him. He took it the wrong way, he wanted to know what anyone had said about him, and rumors were going around. The reason he was so upset was that some people he was around might believe such rumors. Mature, responsible, adults that might hold fairly important jobs doing things forth and fifth graders started.

Morals
Saying you do something out of moral obligations has become a widely over used term. I don't mind people having morals, the problem starts when they try to impose their morals upon me. If you want an example of why I don't have many morals, here's one: Stealing a loaf of bread so you won't go hungry. And now people of course say: "Oh, in that situation it's OK." As I said I don't mind if you have morals, just don't be a hypocrite.
The people who try to impose their beliefs and moral upon me are the people that make me angry. The "religious people" (for luck of a better term) standing outside Wizards of the Cost stopping people and saying "Can I pray for you because you're going to hell?" ( grabbing some people or scaring the hell out of an eight year old kid.) The lawmakers in Olympia and Washington say that gay marriages are wrong even though they have never seen a gay couple in live. The Republicans cutting funding to welfare without ever meeting homeless people and discussing things with them. I've seen many of these things.
I've gone down to a homeless youth center to see how people were doing...And had my skateboard stolen. The people who worked the center were very kind, they promised me if they didn't find my board they would replace it. I gave them two months to find it and they said that they would replace it. Then they gave me a call saying they could only pay for 1/3 of the board. I can't afford the rest. So on the other hand, perhaps some of those morals weren't that bad of ideas.

Guilt
Guilt is a terrible emotion. It lowers self esteem and keeps people second guessing themselves. If people don't feel guilty, though, society considers them cold, heartless beings. So which is better: having an emotion that, for the most part, weakens you, or having people judge you by the way you deal with emotions?
I feel guilty about the fact that I stereotype people. I am totally against racism, sexism, and homo-phobia but, subconsciously, I still get my first impressions of people by the way they look, and I view people of different races in different ways. I don't want to do this and I'm glad to say I do this much less often than I did at the beginning of the year. I'm not completely sure why I do this but I know for a fact that my schooling here in Roosevelt has something to do with it. For the past three years (excluding this one) I have gone to a catholic private school where the extent of our racial diversity was an Asian girl. Plus before that I lived in Kent--also very few black people.
Here is an example of one of these incidents: I walked into my first day of French class this semester, new teacher, new classroom, new people. I looked around the room and saw a black student. I thought "Why would a black kid want to learn French?" A few seconds later I realized what I had thought and simply brushed it off. This is the extent to which I ever take these thoughts, I never act on them or anything. It troubles me that after having been told year after year that racism is very bad, I still do this.

Expectations
Things are never as good or bad as people expect them to be. The moment preceding a good event is often sweeter than the real thing. And the wait for something that you don't want, but you know it's going to happen, is far worse than the event itself. For example, when you go to get a shot, don't you hate waiting for the doctor or nurse to arrive with the needle, even if the shot doesn't hurt at all? Everyone knows how great it will be when summer arrives but summer simply diminishes into waking up when you would normally get home from school. There are many examples of this: school, homework, weekends, holidays. I'm not saying that getting out of school isn't a relief, I'm simply saying that it's not as sweet as most people imagine.

Children's Games
When I was little, my best friend and I pretended to be characters from a videogame. We pretended to be knights who go around killing things. I still play videogames but my days of make believe have turned into role-playing.
Role-playing games are basically big, complex games of make believe. One person (known as the gamemaster) runs the game. He sets up a story in which each of the main characters is controlled by a real person. The gamemaster is the ultimate judge as far as this gaming session is concerned. The players describe what their characters are doing and the story unfolds.
The surprising part is that I am a relatively young player. Some of the people are in their 30's, 40's, sometimes even 50's. The problem is when these games become more important to people than their real lives. People chose to play these games instead of getting a decent jobs (people in their 30's earning little over minimum wage,) getting a girlfriend (people in their mid 20's who have never had a girlfriend,) and staying healthy (about half of the people are majorly overweight.) But these people are my friends so it's hard to tell them their problems no matter how misguided they are.

Homework
I have an extremely difficult time bringing myself to do my homework. I know that by delaying I'm only making it much more difficult on myself but I still have a hard time getting away from the TV, computer, or other activities. I sacrifice sleep but I usually manage to get my homework done. the problem is when I do this to big projects. I sometimes stay up all night finishing projects and reports. Yet I work very well under stress so I usually manage to get a fairly good grade on the paper. Unfortunately, I realize this will hurt me in College where I must regularly do this type of stuff. It is a blessing and a curse then and I'm forced to live with it.