About the Young Writers Project
YWP, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, Vermont, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power and to gain confidence and skills for the workplace and life. YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in newspapers across Vermont, on Vermont Public Radio and in YWP’s monthly digital magazine, The Voice. Since 2006, it has offered young people a place to write, explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org, which has only one rule: Be respectful. For more information, please contact YWP executive director Geoffrey Gevalt at ggevalt@youngwritersproject.org.
Janet McIntosh Barkdoll, a high school junior from Shoreham, writes about the rigors of junior year – the homework and the worries (everything from climate change to the looming end of high school and high school friendships).
Current Thoughts of a Grumpy Person: Breathing By June
By Janet McIntosh Barkdoll
[T]here is fuzz on my sweater.
My house is cold.
The fridge lacks leftovers to find dinner among.
I’m fed up with screens.
Word thinks Spanish words are spelled wrong.
It is rainy and wet
and windy and cold
and homework about climate change, natural disasters, anthropogenic sources of
pollution, toxic materials, destroyed habitats,
species on their way to extinction,
humans dying,
lack of food,
lack of water,
lack of plant life in soil,
too many humans,
too many particles of CO2,
too many fossil fuels,
too many non-renewable resources.
What the freaking, WHAT are we thinking?
Are we thinking?
How many of us are thinking? OK. I’ll think instead of complain.
Better — I’ll act.
Awesome.
I just remembered —
I have so many tests and hurdles to clear at the end of this school year;
let me just finish studying for the next fifty weeks,
then, don’t forget, I have friends — Let’s get together!
Wait, nope, now you’ve graduated high school and you’re in a new place.
Make friends with these people!
Oh yay!
But each of them just makes me look back — this one’s got her smile…
this one’s got his ears,
that one reminds me of another friend …
Thanks, junior year.
If I am still breathing by June, I’ll thank someone — but certainly not you.
Check out the May issue of The Voice, the Young Writers Project monthly digital magazine. Click here.
