Schoolwork

Spring cleaning for me has partially involved going through all my old school stuff. I kept all of it. I've already gone through 16 folders filled with school stuff, old stuff Freckles and I drew as kids, random stories and bits of writing, old sheet music for piano, piano theory notes, and a surprising amount of perfectly good blank paper. I've gone through all the school stuff and sorted out the big assignments or things that caught my attention, and had decided to recycle most of the other stuff. I asked mom where I should put it, and she offered the suggestion of taking it out to the cabin to use to start fires.

I was surprised at how completely against the suggestion I was. I mean, I was planning on recycling this stuff anyway. I don't need it. I don't need my old math notes, or social studies notes, or even old biology notes. I don't have any reason to keep it beyond the fact that I'm a giant sentimental loser who hangs onto things forever and ever because they all have memories.

Ptarckas informed me that he was happy to burn his school notes, for the reason that he hadn't enjoyed grade school a whole lot. When I saw Artifex, Nerd, and Tupperware yesterday, they all said they had gotten rid of their old school notes (maybe not Artifex, I can't remember). Tupperware said that he burned them.

I just... I can't burn them. I can't do it. I put a lot of effort into making those notes. I was a good student. Burning all of this stuff feels like all the proof I had that I worked hard and did well is gone. Like it was pointless putting in all the effort I did. And I put in probably too much effort. All my life I've been praised as a hard worker, a good student, a "pleasure to have in class" (I can't tell you how many times I got that comment on report cards).

This still doesn't explain why I was so okay with recycling this stuff. I think maybe it's because I could get rid of it all at once, and just walk away, and deal with it (I really am a sentimental loser, you guys. Trust me). I just want it out of my room, because then I have room in that drawer for things that are a bit more important, like, y'know, tax stuff, and university papers (not my university notes, though I'm having trouble throwing those out as well... and also selling my textbooks, though that's more just me being lazy and too timid to find out how to sell them), and also I want to free up room in my closet for things like clothes and books. All the clutter in my room is stressing me out, and these notes are a big part of that.

Maybe it's because I based so much of my identity on school for so long? "Good student" has been a piece of my identity all my life, even as the others changed- as "dancer" and "writer" slowly fell away and I had less and less by which to define myself. Burning all this stuff feels a little like destroying a part of myself, as cheesy and nerdy as that sounds. In all of these notes is countless hours of hard work spent learning sometimes things I hated. There are numerous margin poems full of exhaustion at how many things we had to cover, or how little I cared about what we were learning, and endless tiny doodles.

It's sort of like burning a scrapbook to me, I guess. Maybe for some people it feels good to get rid of school notes because they hated school, because it meant nothing to them, because other things were more important. I loved school. I still do.

I don't know. I don't know why I'm hanging onto this so much. I just want to let go of it so I can have some fucking space in my room for new things, but I can't.

I think for my own mental health I should probably just dispose of these in the original way of my choosing- recycling. It's all paper, anyway, and I've kept the really significant things, the things with memories written into them, or more hard work than usual. I can see myself dumping these notes into a recycling bin and walking away. I cannot see me handling it well if I had to watch them go up in flames, especially at the cabin because that would mean that I'd have to watch as they slowly disappeared over months. They all need to go at once, and it needs to be instantaneous.

I can't explain why that's better. I have no reason for it. It just is. That's what I want to do, and with my newfound sense of "I'm an adult now bitch" I will be able to be like "sorry, mom, I need this for my own sanity."


One thing I did find surprising was how much I wanted to keep my old history notes. I think that class was probably one of the most valuable for getting me interested in something I can remain interested in for life. Not even just war history (though my love for WWI history runs deep) (WWII is cool too I guess), but all the rest of it, too. I really liked learning European history. I almost wonder if I would have found Canadian history as interesting if I had learned it when I was 16 instead of when I was 9, but then again, maybe Europe just has a cooler history (or maybe it is just given more attention and credit).

I know I'll probably get over the loss of all my useless space-wasting notes once I just get rid of them. I have historically been a very resilient person, and I don't expect that will change now.

yer pal,
swegan