Interlude: Detention and Suspension

And so, my journey into the final years of high school remained. The majority of educators during this time were, in my opinion, easily duped. Perhaps they were tired of teaching or they just didn't care. I ditched class with a frequency that makes me surprised I graduated at all. Frankly, I was bored to tears of the whole scene and just wanted to get out of that place even though I had very little idea of what I would do afterwards.

In school suspension should have been a constant in that final year, a concept that baffled me since I was in a classroom doing absolutely nothing and for what purpose? Disrupting class? No. Insulting the teachers or other authority figures? Hardly, I may not have respected them any more than the average teen, but nor did I respect them less. The reason I was originally placed into this mini prison called ISS was because of (get this) tardiness. Yeah, I'd frequently be late to class. Tell me the logic behind that.

In order to get the first ISS, a student would have to be late five times. On average, I was about five minutes late. Which means, theoretically, I missed a total of twenty-five minutes of mediocre education before I received my first ISS.

During ISS, I was placed in a room with a handful of other students. We were not allowed to do anything. No talking, no reading, no writing and definitely no sleeping. All day, and this was it. The theory was that once we were sentenced to this extreme state of isolation we'd shape up because we'd feel sorry for ourselves for behaving so badly.

Yeah right.

My actual thought process was more along the lines of: "Let me get this straight, if I'm late to class five times, I get ISS, but I have to completely ditch a class three times in order to get ISS. Let's see, mathwise that means I get to skip a total of 45min per class x 3 classes-25 min MORE before I'd get in trouble again."

It only took a month before I was in ISS again. This time for flat out skipping classes that I knew I was going to be late to.

More time to think still didn't turn out the way the school board had hoped.

"Y'know, if I could figure out a way to get out of ditching classes all together, I wouldn't have to be in here again. 2+2=4 and my handwriting is very similar to my mother's."

Needless to say, even though I ditched a lot of classes during the remainder of my senior year I never spent another moment in ISS, and by the time my parents found out about it? I really didn't care what they had to say since I had already graduated anyway.