The Perks of Kinda Being a Wallflower ~ Nick Ventresca

Well, that time of the month where everyone's doing their last-minute blog post (except me of course) has rolled around once again. So seeing as you somehow navigated through the flood of blog posts all the way to mine, I figured I'd start with a welcome. "Finally," I imagine you're thinking, "we get to see what Nick thinks is important!" Well, buckle up buttercup because you're about to read a lot of incoherent rambling that I will loosely tie together at the end.

Now, high school can definitely be stressful. Don't get me wrong, the never-ending waves of assignments and assessments certainly has its ups and downs, but I for one would much rather be at home getting a full twelve hours of sleep. "Wow," you're once again musing, "he's got a point. How does everyone get through it?" Great question random reader! To answer this question I would have to ask you this; How do you get through your school day?

Don't worry about answering this rhetorical question because this whole post is about answering it for you! For me at the very least, I would easily answer that the way that I manage my stress and the overall day to day insanity that is high school is my peers. Well, not all of my peers (I'll explore this more in a bit, no worries), but more so the select group of our peers that I am lucky enough to be called a friend by. I don't know about you, but if I didn't have these people to count on from class to class for a laugh or two, I would drop out and pursue a career in the replenishment of power used by automotive vehicles at our local Shell (yes, that means I'll be pumping your gas).

The people that I call my friends make the never-ending days seem short in a way that no early-dismissal can. Yet, they are not the topic of this blog post.

I know, you must be shocked. That whole paragraph, seemingly meaningless. It's devastating really. Despair not reader, for I am getting to the point eventually!

Now, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but a lot of people in high school are what we in the random metaphor department refer to as the raisin in your "chocolate chip" cookie. If that's still confusing, just to clarify what I'm saying; high school is a hot spot for disingenuous people pretending to be someone they're not. I'm not saying this is something I myself am immune to, but if you take a step back from your papers and take a look around at your peers, you'll see what they want you to see. The innocent socialite. The literal "too cool for school" high school flunk. The "jock" that doesn't brag but isn't humble either. The dedicated STEM kid who's overworked but doing fine. Pretty much think of a generic personality and you can probably think of someone who can match it in high school.

The funny thing about these people is that they seem to change their entire identities with the wind. One minute you'll have a really pleasant one-on-one conversation about their weekend, and the next they're huddling around their group of friends assuming the role of whatever the identity of the person they've created is. Even from class to class I see so many people go from one personality to the next, one entire person to another. It's like every morning these people spin a little bedside wheel that decides which version of themselves they'll be that day, and the only option that's missing is who they really are.

Here's where we finally get to the point of this whole blog post. The thing that's important to me is this; I think it's important to be myself. I know right, somebody call Hallmark and tell them they've got another writer! Sarcastic comments aside, I truly do find this to be a super important thing for me.

I occasionally find myself in settings where I don't have a really good friend around me, but I really try hard not to change my personality for a period so I don't have to work in silence. I don't want to make friends with someone if I'm not being myself, because if I'm not being real then the friendship isn't either. I don't find it fun pretending to be someone who I'm really not. There's a lot of people in high school today who I imagine don't either, yet put up these fake personas regardless. Now, this isn't to detract or criticize these people, I just don't like doing it, it's not for me. That's why I always try to stay true to who I am, and never violate my own core values on a whim in a vain effort to be more sociable.

In conclusion, I find it weird that people aren't often themselves in high school and I personally would rather not act like a stranger my whole life. Yet in a world where people are constantly trying to be the best version of themselves in person and online, I find it harder and harder to find truly genuine people and that really stinks. For me at least, truthfulness is such an important part of building any relationship. If relationships are built on deceptions, then what's the point of them in the first place?

Then again, maybe I'm a really pessimistic fifteen-year-old know-it-all in need of some caffeine and a chill pill. I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of people that are gonna disagree with this post and that's perfectly fair; it's more negative than my typical post. Maybe someone else shares my way over-analyzed view of high school socializing. Or maybe I'm just crazy. Who knows really, I think I'm more cut out to watch the circus than be another clown.