DISCLAIMER: This is not an academic essay; rather, it is a personal reflective essay I did for my Year 12 English class back in 2005. I’ve held onto it all this time because from time to time I like to revisit it just to reflect on what I was thinking and feeling at that particular time in my life, and how far I’ve come since then. I’ve decided to post it here due to the hope that some high school student who may have just stumbled on this page might just get something out of it. Lastly, to any member of the North Rockhampton High School class of 2005 who might be reading this right now, know that this essay was and is NOT meant to be defamatory to you in any way. So enjoy.
High school is like a jungle. That’s a thinking man’s way of saying, To have survived it is to hate survived hell. Students can be divided into three different groups: the predators (lions, tigers, snakes etc.), who belittle everyone else because they think they’re superior; the prey (birds, fish, insects, rodents etc.), who so frequently are made to feel like the scum of the Earth by their “superior” peers, and the rest (monkeys and trees), who live out their lives in peace, filling out the remaining scenery. High schools have one of the highest occurrence levels of power struggles.
Why is this so? This is how teenagers – like animals – adapt to their natural habitat. More so, they are most very self-conscious about their own reputation. In primary school, bullying happens just as much, but not for this reason, as primary school students are simply too young to care. Teenagers are emotionally volatile, and in high school reputation is everything. They “go with the crowd” to fit in. When in groups, they use stand-off tactics to bully weaker students in order to look cool in front of their friends – hunting in packs.
When I first started Year 8, I was an innocent and naïve 13-year-old, anxious and scared of the experience that awaited me. It only took me a little while to settle in, but after I did the prospect of surviving high school seemed much more difficult than I had first foreseen. The workload was relentless, the teachers were stricter, and the older students were constantly trying to be intimidating. But what especially shocked me was the transformation my classmates took on. They were not children anymore. But now I know that’s just human nature, as very soon after it happened to me, too.
I have been a victim of bullying all my life. High school has been the worst. One especially bad patch caused by my being bullied was in the middle of Year 9, when I was constantly getting upset at school for what now seem to be very stupid and pointless reasons. It even got so bad that I wanted to kill myself. I felt completely alone, like an astronaut stranded in space by himself. But I got over that phase almost as quickly as I got into it.
Everything happens for a reason, and in retrospect I believe this experience was one through which I had to go, and if I didn’t, I would’ve missed out on a vital life lesson: that you shouldn’t care what anyone else thinks of you. And I don’t. Every student here is so paranoid about their own reputations, so caught up in their own shadow, to just be an individual, someone who says “Say what you want to about me, but I don’t care!” you need to have more guts than Pauline Hanson. Every school needs one of these individuals, and I believe, at North Rockhampton High School, I have to be that individual.
There is no place in society where power struggles are more abundant and severe. You can turn on the evening news or open a newspaper day after day and hear or see stories of workers’ strikes and political disputes. Corruption and confidentiality also play a part in struggles of power. In the current Bundaberg hospital scandal, Indian doctor Jayant Patel (or “Dr. Death”), who is accused of deliberately killing innocent patients, abused his power by threatening to sack his employees if they exposed to the authorities the details of what he was doing. Those of whom who actually dared to “blow the whistle” on Dr. Death are the individuals, so to speak, in this situation. They exposed him because they felt he should not get away with his actions.
What ignites power struggles? Racial prejudice, sexual harassment, different religious beliefs, social resentments, dictatorships? Or is it just humans’ natural blood lust? Because every case is different I suppose we will never know every reason for sure. But what is clear, is the tremendous effect power struggles have upon the world in which we live. All major cases (that is, which are widely told to us through the media) toy with our emotions and in some cases even make some of us scared to leave the safety of our own homes. For example, the War or Terror has caused many of us to be very wary of Muslims in the post-9/11 world; the Dr. Death inquiry has instilled in Australians the fear of being admitted to hospital in Bundaberg. And with the case of power struggles in schools, bullying much too frequently makes victimized students petrified of going to school, a side-effect which in turn affects their learning.
Almost any person who experienced it can tell you that high school is one of the most grueling things you will go through in life. Some will say moving to high school from primary school is tough, but after you’ve settled in there it’s all smooth sailing from there. The way I see it, they could not be more wrong if they tried. You see, the truth is, that transition – moving to high school from primary school – is just a warm-up. It prepares you for the real tests in the five years to come. The workload piles up as the years breeze by. Puberty and the inescapable abuse people serve up to you there pulls you apart and rebuilds you into an angry, emotionally scarred young adults when you leave high school, in vast contrast to what you were when you entered it. Only the strongest survive. Can you stand the heat?
Through my own personal experiences of high school, despite all the aforementioned personal upheavals I have had to endure, it has made me a better person. As a Year 8 student I was not always successfully trying to fit in. Once I did, I discovered the true nature of this place and of my friends. I found myself, I found my crowd, and of my friends I found which were my genuine friends and which were just trying to take advantage of me. I now am fully aware of the true nature and effects of power struggles in society but that awareness has not made me afraid of going outside and enjoying myself or dissuaded me from living my life as an individual.
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