It’s Dangereous Business Walking Out Your Front Door.

So this time it’s Underoath. I can’t disagree with this title. It is, the world is a dangerous place, and not just dangerous in the sense of getting your shit stolen, getting bashed waiting for a bus or getting stabbed in Northbridge on a Friday night, the world is big. The world is scary. The world is full of so many things we disagree with, so many things we want to change and so many things we don’t want to see.

One of the things I don’t want to see is leaving school.

” I will now bring new meaning to the word alone”, to quote my title song. I may have everybody I love, care for and am loved and cared for around me, but when I leave I’m on my own. I’m my own Geoff. No timetables, no teachers up my ass. I’m going to need to be truly independent. I can get on my independence high horse as much as I want, but in the end I’m still a school kid and I’m still bound by the mundane, yet appreciated, routine of school life. When I leave I’m going to have to think, say, do, act and contribute off my own free back and I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet.

It’s all I know as a kid, it’s all I’ve ever done, is be taught the right and wrong way of doing things day in, day out. Now that I have to leave and become (in theory) a responsible, contributive, thoughtful member of society is when I don’t want to. Right now is when I feel I need that cradle of High School the most, the cradle that comes with seeing everything the same and being told how to live your life like you’re in the military is what I need and I don’t know why. I’ve spent the last 12 or 13 years in schools of some sort whinging about how much I want to leave and how I think school is lame. Now look, I’m leaving at the end of this year and I have no idea where to go or what to do. At least with school you have a definite idea of what you’re going to be doing and when.

” Pain has never been so brilliant”.

School, in the years gone by, was painful. All I wanted was out and it made me strive to be a better person so I could get out and have some kind of future and that’s the brilliance of it, that pain is intentional and it worked. Why do you think I moved to La Salle? I wanted to get a real education, not just A’s and B’s, but be educated as a person and as a part of the greater community. I wanted to become a real life person, not just some schlub who was spiralling downwards. I was. I was really spiralling and then I decided to go off and flip 180 degrees. Now I represent my student body on the Student Representative Council and I’m making a difference I hope. It may not sound like much to you for me to be on the SRC, but to come from where I have as a person and be considered for, let alone accepted as, the role of Arts Captain was a big step and a huge confidence boost for me. I wear that badge with pride and I try and do my best to fulfill the role as not only Arts Captain, captain of the arts, but as a role model for the younger years – that’s my part in this duo of Arts Captaincy; Dani does all the office work and keeping Pirlo happy (or not so it seems) and I just wanna be there for younger kids and try my best to “Set the Standard” as Sackett says.

The freedom to grow and nurturing environment of school is often underrated. I love, and will miss, the fact that challenging everything around me to my fullest extent is often highly encouraged and supported. I don’t know where I’m going with thiss paragraph, but all I do know is that school is my rock and I’ve had a lot of great experiences through it. I don’t wanna leave.

I get to spend all day, every day, with the people I love and making life long memories. I don’t want to enter the real world and have that end – have to get a job, be on time, think for myself. I’m dreading having to become what society deems to be a member of itself. Someone who votes, someone who takes concern over current affairs, someone who has to be at their dull office job all week. Please don’t let that be me.

“I’ve been up at this all night long
I’ve been drowning in my sleep
I’ve prayed for your safe place
And its time for us to leave”