All Aboard the Struggle Bus

Come join me in my struggle today as I talk about what I hope is a shared helplessness. Today I wanted to talk about that one class we all have where we feel like Miley Cyrus will become clean and wholesome again before we do one thing right. This is going to be general advice for literally any class because if Brian from "The Breakfast Club" taught us anything it's that there is no such thing as "easy A" class.

To get the ball rolling, I'll share my experiences that inspired this post. It could've been a subplot in a mediocre high school genre film, an intelligent girl who never had any real problems with her core classes (me) decides to take a Jewelry class just for fun. As the class begins working on projects, she slowly starts to realize that she is really bad at drilling, and then sawing, and later filing. She tries to correct her mistakes, but nothing is making a large difference. The hard truth of it is, she is struggling in this class. She feels incompetent, and embarrassed. The academic confidence she once had has dissolved into nothingness, leaving her feeling seemingly weak and alone.

Me in jewelry class. Image courtesy of Barkpost.

But seriously guys, I am terrible at jewelry making, and the drill press is the worst part. As my friend Natalie nicely put it "The drill press is the bane of Allison's existence." How should I put this, I would rather write a twenty page essay on my experiences with watching paint dry than use the drill press one more time. It doesn't help that when I'm using it people are usually forming a line behind me. Those people are not really interested in how big of a challenge it is for me, they just want to drill there holes and get on with their lives. I mean who cares if I'm completely paralyzed by fear of the power tool they entrust to 9th graders (because we are supposedly so mature now. I'm trying really hard, but I'm not even living up to my own, now severely lowered, standards.

What I imagine my conversations with my art teacher are going to be like. Image courtesy of EpicPinterestFail.

  So clearly I'm having problems, but how do I, or you for that matter, fix that? my suggestion, find one part of it that you can do even slightly well, and maybe something that you enjoy. If you can focus on that, your life int that class might be easier (no promises in cases like mine), and less miserable.

This beacon of hope for me in my jewelry class is refining our pieces. This means sanding by hand for literally over an hour, and then using the buffing machine, which, by the way has scalped people. All this, just to make it look shiny. Sounds terrible, but I love it, I might even go as far as saying that I'm good at it. On a more social note, I also have good friends in that class (shout out to Sam and Franzi). They keep me from going insane, or should I say more insane.

Well, this is the end for now, but kudos to those who actually made it to the end of this post. Special thanks to my mom for at least trying to understand why I continually embarrass myself on the internet. And finally, none of this would be possible without viewers like you, thank you (PBS reference). Talk you you dorks later (even sooner if you comment on this post)!