High School "Advisory"

Here is an example of the “Advisory” curriculum being “taught” at my school.  The section below is to be taught in a 20 minute period. 

Read it, and ask yourself, "Seriously??"

Are parents not expected to teach their children about money?  Since when does it fall on schools, specifically in a 20-minute, once-weekly diversion, to teach budgeting?  If I have to be personal finance consultant, counselor, parent, AND teacher, I should be collecting all those salaries.

(P.S. Notice the question mark before the lesson plan.  Did they not know if it was a good idea??)

10th grade

?         Budgeting

o   Introduce the lesson by asking students to make a list of ALL the things they want for their birthday/holiday.  Then discuss the difference between a want and a need.

o   Students divide their lists into two categories, wants and needs.

o   Discuss their lists and have them revise. Some things are deleted. As a class make a list of all standard household bills parents receive each month (electricity, gas/water, cable, internet, trash, recycling, phone, cell phone). Be sure to impress upon them that their personal business is private and not to share specific dollar amounts. Form a class list on the board or overhead.

o   Place estimated $$ amounts by each bill. For example, electricity $100, etc.

o   Arrive at a grand total of the average monthly bills that their parents must pay before gifts may be purchased. (This is a real eye opener!!)

o   Put up the number $15,080—this is what a person who makes minimum wage earns a year (divide it by 12 to show the monthly take away and compare it to the bills to see what is left over).

SHUT IT DOWN, PEOPLE.

The Secret, or Something

People often get stuck in a vortex of guilt that keeps them from seeing situations clearly. 

I am beginning to fear that I see nothing clearly.  I am in a constant cloud of delusional guilt and feigned apathy and unproductive thought.  To clear away the clouds, I drink mimosas for breakfast, or I go downtown drink a Taj Mahal and eat mulligatawny for lunch, or I drink a whole bottle of wine and forget to eat dinner.

Or … I’m stuck at my job all day long, and then I come home and watch Judge Judy in a spaced-out stupor.  (What the fuck?)  I bide my time in the most uninteresting ways all the time.  I distract myself with stupid shit in a failed attempt to make time pass, because I’m not happy.  I don’t know how, exactly, Judge Judy is supposed to make me happy (it doesn’t), but I do understand why I drink all the time.  I just want a reprieve from the vacuum which is currently sucking up all the energy from my body.  My brain has become a filing system for thoughts that don’t accomplish anything or comfort me or supply answers.  Although I don’t do heroin, a part of me understands why Phillip Seymour Hoffman (who was wildly successful in his chosen career) ended up dead with a needle sticking out of his arm.  Sometimes we are looking for what we cannot find, and we are blinded to our talents.

An epiphany:  it’s unhealthy to catalogue thoughts.  They build up and hit a terrible, critical mass that then becomes impossible to break apart. 

If life was a club with rules, I would be kicked out for various violations.  My external behavior is socially acceptable, but my thought crime is felonious.  Many other people have articulated my conundrum:   I love humanity (as a general concept), but I can’t stand people.  They’re such assholes.  Everyone is out for themselves, all the time – myself included.  I sometimes trick myself into believing that I am martyring myself for the benefit of others, but … am I?  Anyone with half a brain could see that I’m a farce.  I don’t even convince myself, so how can other people possibly believe in my pretense?  At least people who are properly psychotic can rationalize their behavior somehow.  I’ve lost the ability to justify almost everything I’m doing, all the time.  So I am currently choosing to disengage.

Not an ideal set of circumstances, I think.  (But then, what the fuck do I know?  I’m just a girl, who got old all of a sudden, and then looked in the mirror one day, and didn’t know who was looking back.)

I’m stuck.  Stuck in a lot of things, actually.  But it’s important to identify the common factor in all my various life crises:  me.  No one can change anything about themselves without taking proper action, and I am seemingly incapable of taking any action whatsoever.  I’m more inclined to turn on Girls on HBO and watch an entire season of other peoples’ dysfunction just to distract myself for a few hours than to do anything proactive.  I could have a profitable hobby like Lena Dunham and write eccentric stories about life.  But even thinking about all that effort makes me tired.  Easier to do nothing and pretend that I have hobbies by just looking busy (while actually doing nothing). 

Perhaps fakery is the key to happiness.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that there is some secret club or society or rule that I never learned.  One of these days, perhaps someone will accidentally let it slip.

 I’m listening... (just in case).

I Love … I Hate

I Love:

• ·         The idea of being a writer and doing what I want, when I want, where I want.
• ·         Mimosas.
• ·         Honesty.  (And people who desire nothing less.)
• ·         Kurt Vonnegut’s existential angst.
• ·         The beach.  I want to write essays about things I find important, while I’m sunning myself in the 70 degree ocean air coming off the Pacific Ocean.
• ·         My children.  Unconditionally.
• ·         Dancing, even though I never get to do it in public anymore. 
• ·         The idea of love, even though I’ve forgotten what it’s like.
• ·         Waking up and getting coffee and getting back in bed.
• ·         The right hat that perfectly cradles my skull.
• ·         Turning on movies that I’ve already seen so I don’t have to actually pay attention to them, but which comfort me with their familiarity.
• ·         A crackling fire and a good book and a glass of wine.

I Hate:

• ·         Other people constantly wanting something from me.
• ·         Poseurs.  Fake fucking people who pretend to be something they’re not.  People who look right at a person and think one thing, but say something meaningless and untrue.
• ·         My inability to be want I want to be.  (Apparently, I am not a writer, even though that’s the only thing I currently want to be.)
• ·         The fact that Phillip Seymour Hoffman just died of a heroin overdose.  Why are the most broken people the best at what they do?
• ·         Being bloated.  (Don’t judge me.)
• ·         That I have no friends to talk to about anything.  Ever.
• ·         How the bureaucratic bullshit of my job makes me want to quit the one thing I’m pretty good at.
• ·         People who stick their faces in screens rather than interacting properly with other people.
• ·         Purposeful ignorance.
• ·         Feeling too much.  (Actually, thinking too much is more apropos.) 
• ·         That I can’t seem to graduate from high school.