The cold summer nights remind me, always, that school is coming soon. I can see the lights of it across the hill, and they always remind me of how they will soon force me back into a schedule where I can't spend a third of the day with a window opened onto a night sky full of stars. Instead I have to begrudge the night skies over to mundane tasks like sleeping, giving up my favourite and most productive hours to rest for something I hate.
School is sometimes compared as light next to jobs, but jobs are better. Jobs have choice. One can't quit school unless they desire to become something akin to flotsam in the ocean of today. So, I go every day I have to, learning things that I already know or could grasp comfortably at home with modern resources, having them pounded into my head and then being asked to regurgitate them regardless of my interest. Why? Because it's a requirement. Because it looks good. Because learning is a great thing.
The counselors aren't there for everybody, not really. Go and talk to them about feeling trapped and angry, but what can any counselor say? It's not much different anywhere else, and early graduation shorts you lots of classes and grades. Now please, the counselor has to go see somebody else with a real problem like drugs, alcohol, or both, so make room for the people who get care because they can't handle themselves.
The lights over the hill at the school are still mostly off, so I may make hay while the sun shines, as I do and will continue to do through the school year. Living through my books and favourite parts of the internet that aren't blocked at school, and all of it while I'm home, it's enough to make things acceptable at the end of a day. I can make it through with that and reminders, sympathies, that I am far from first or last, and that soon I will be gone from this place which has nothing more to offer me. Count it down like the ringing in of the new year.