pushing buttons.

Now Playing: Lolita by The Veronicas (the addiction, friction, it burns you alive, so illegal, no evil is seen with these eyes. I won't tell if you want it, I will if you want, nothing is sacred, don't care if it's wrong)

I've always been one to push buttons. I've always been very...anti-authority, if you get what I'm saying. When you're someone like me, marginalized by society - a woman, a minor, an immigrant, an ethnic minority - you can't trust the people up top to protect you, look after you. You have to do things yourself. And yes, you have to push some buttons in the process.

I've never been one to accept a system on face value. I don't really know where I get my cynicism from, but I am suspicious of almost anything and anyone. Trust is earned, not a given.

And in the past this has worked rather well. The high school system was easy enough to manipulate if you know what you want and know how to get there. In primary school I wasn't strong enough to get things to go my way, but in high school I just thought 'what the hell'. I still wonder what would have happened if I wasn't brave enough, after English class that day, to walk up to the English department at recess and ask the head of department if I could be moved up a grade. I very nearly chickened out. It's the scariest thing I've ever done - scarier than being wheeled in to the operating theatre, scarier than that moment of anticipation before your first kiss. Suddenly I was caught up in a whirlwind of meetings and discussions with teachers and admin and it was all very scary, but I held my ground. Even scarier was walking timidly into my first year nine English class and realizing that I hadn't the faintest idea what I was doing. But it's the best thing I've ever done in my life. I'm a shameless teacher's pet, and look where it's got me. There is no benefit in having friends amongst your peers, I've learned that the hard way. The only relationships worth having are those that give you what you want.

But now it's getting harder and harder to challenge a system that is becoming ever more claustrophobic and hypocritical and suffocating. There are so many things wrong with the system, so much that needs changing, so many things that disadvantage me without rhyme or reason. I feel like I'm being punished for being different, being special, being me. I'm a non-conformist, but so what? It's a free country. But there's nothing I can do, and the feeling of powerlessness is...disorienting. In the past I've always had my way - I've always challenged the system, and won. Now I keep getting told to not waste my time, to not challenge a system - but nobody's challenging it, so nothing's getting changed. Things have to change, grow, evolve. When we're whacked over the head and told to shut up and toe the line...things don't remain static in a changing world. They go forwards, or they go backwards. Our education system is going backwards because it refuses to change with the times.

So yeah, I'm angry. I'm angry that even now I am not valued for who I am. They keep feeding all this bullshit that we're all equal, all different, that we should all follow our own paths - but unless you take the path most traveled they don't give a shit about you, think you're second class. Nobody else has to put up with snide remarks about how I'll never get a job and never make it big. Nobody else is treated like a drug-addled dreamer. Do you know how many unemployed scientists there are? Do you know how many options I have in my life? I've never for a second thought that I'm walking into a dead end, but I am not recognised as being of equal value to people who have more socially-acceptable talents, are good at things that are perceived as being 'better' and 'more worthwhile' than the things that I like. I'm angry that nobody cares about my concerns, even though the system is meant to be a service to students and not a fucking hierarchy for bureaucrats to claw their way to the top. I'm not going to shut up and bow over books when it gets me nowhere, in a system where it doesn't matter how good or bad I am, but how lucky I get with numbers.

I'd always been taught to fight for what you want. My parents are white collar workers, but I've always been treated as a working-class immigrant - and I'm damned proud of the fact that I'm a working-class girl. Nothing has fallen into my lap, I've worked for everything I've got. But suddenly nobody's practicing what they preach; they've given up in the name of giving in, and it's not right. It's not fair that the system takes advantage of the fact that nobody's brave enough to stand up - and when they are, they're on their own.