Just to be clear, I'm American, I live in the Midwest.

The school system is a load of shit. It's also hypocritical. The teenage brain doesn't start functioning properly until 9:00? Better wake them up at six! Oh, they have seven hours of homework? Too bad! You should manage your time better to get things done!

Bullshit. It's all bullshit.

Even the teachers fucking complain. You should know things are screwed up when even the staff members are complaining about it!

And by the time you enter your junior year in high school, you probably have a job. And that job cuts into your homework and free time. But if you don't work you're either a looser nerd or a lazy ass.

I was smart, I got a summer job. But I don't make nearly as much as someone who works year-round. But you know what school tells us?

"School is your job!"

No the fuck it isn't! We don't get paid, we don't get breaks (weekends don't count, because you and I both know we get enough homework to keep us busy the entire fucking time), and we don't get sick days. You're sick? Well you have to make it up! In a real job, they don't make you do twice the work to compensate for the time you are sick!

Now, back to the topic that really set me off: sleeping in class.

I have friends who have pulled near all-nighters because of homework. Teachers expect you to dedicate one to two hours of your time to their class, and multiply that number by eight or nine and you see the problem really fucking fast. When do we get to sleep? To eat? To relax?

You're considered a lazy no-good pupil if you doze off in the classroom. You know what my sister's 8th grade teachers do?!? For every minute a student is sleeping in their class, they take one percent off their entire letter grade.

ONE FUCKING PERCENT EACH MINTE THEY ARE SLEEPING IN THEIR CLASS. THAT IS GODDAMN BULLSHIT. YOU SLEEP FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES, THATS FIFTEEN PERCENT OFF YOUR ENTIRE LETTER GRADE! YOU HAVE 100%? TOO BAD YOU LAZY ASS, ITS A 85% NOW, A FUCKING B. HAVE A NICE TIME TRYING TO RAISE THAT BACK UP. MAYBE NEXT TIME YOU SHOULDN'T SLACK OFF AND THINK THAT YOU CAN JUST SLEEP AWAY IN THIS CLASS, BECAUSE I KNOW FOR A DAMN FACT YOU WONT MAKE IT THROUGH LIFE WITHOUT KNOWING THAT THE MITOCHONDRIA IS THE FUCKING POWERHOUSE OF THE GODDAMN CELL.

Utter, fucking, bullshit. It makes me so angry I just want to explode. And they can get away with this, just like they can get away with withholding our high school diplomas from us if we don't do our community senior project. That's right fuckers, they have it rigged so that if you fail or refuse to do your senior project, you fail senior year and don't graduate. And it's all because of a fucking loophole in the law that prohibits that.

Schools are so worried about students not making it through their programs and into college in order to someday keep their business going that they don't worry about our own well-being. It's fucking capitalism in its own damn way, and I hate it.

But what do I know? I'm just a high school senior. I don't know how to deal with the "real world" yet.

Bull.