Violet - Welcome to My Senior Year (1)

Violet: Welcome to my Senior Year

So if you're too school for cool
And you're treated like a fool
You could choose to let it go
We can always, we can always party on our own

So raise your, so raise your glass if you are wrong
In all the right ways
All my underdogs we will never, never be
Anything but loud and nitty gritty, dirty little freaks...

Won't you come on and come on and
Raise your glass for me
                                                            --- Pink (Raise Your Glass)
For the record, I hated high school.  It seemed like an effort in futility most of the time.  I played along, stayed out of the principal's office, and got decent grades, but nothing that would put me in the Honor Society (much to my parents utter chagrin).  I knew I was smart; I didn't need to knock myself out proving it to everyone else.  By the time I made it to my senior year, I already had enough credits to graduate.  There was only one little problem standing in my way and preventing me from graduating early: our school mandated four years of English, and I had been denied the option of taking two different English courses at once.  Therefore, I was stuck in purgatory for another year.  Fantastic!  And thank you, I think I will go slit my wrists now!

The only thing that made my last year of torture even minimally bearable was the fact that I only had to come to school for 4 class periods each day.  Then I got to escape to the local community college, where I was taking two classes towards my bachelor's degree.  I started out each day with PE (Ugh! What girl wants to be sweaty so early in the morning?  I think I'll pass.), went to English, on to French Three, and rounded out the day with Music Composition.  Well the underwater basket weaving class was already full by the time it was my turn to pick my classes (note the intense sarcasm), so I had to compromise. 

I wasn't sure what to expect in Music Composition, but so far it hadn't been overly heinous.  Mr. Zimmerman was an ex-hippie, complete with long hair (covering a growing bald spot) pulled into a pony tail at the nape of his neck.  We had spent the first few weeks of class combing through a variety of genres and formats of current songs.  Now it was time for us to give it a try.  Wait -- what?  I had no idea this was going to be part of my assignments. I love music, don't get me wrong, but to actually write something myself was completely out of my depth.  I might be able to eke out a nursery rhyme if pressured, but nothing that was going to win a Grammy, that's for damn sure.

So here I sat, slowly plowing through my senior year of high school, poised on the edge of the rest of my life.  I had grown weary of the life of a military brat long ago and longed for the day when I could opt out of the next move my dad would have to make.  I knew that my next step was to go to college, and I had applied to several top-notch schools:  Ohio State and Purdue were my top choices (as far away from home as I could get would suit me just fine.)  I had no idea that everything was about to change in ways I couldn't even begin to imagine.