[Y]oung Writers Project, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power, and to gain confidence and skills for school, the workplace and life.
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Each week, VTDigger features a writing submission – an essay, poem, fiction or nonfiction – accompanied by a photo or illustration from Young Writers Project.
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, share their photos, art, audio and video, and to explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org. For more information, please contact Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org.
Fiona Goodman, 14, of Brattleboro writes about the many, many hours she spends in school – and at age 14, she’s wondering if that will be her life for the next eight years.
Math
By Fiona Goodman
[I] get home from school 3:45 at the earliest, leave around 8:30.
That’s 16 hours and 45 minutes away from school.
Assuming that I sleep from 11:30 to 7 –
then subtract an hour for insomnia –
that’s only 10 hours and 15 minutes awake and at home, and seven in school.
Still more time away from school
than in it;
but three hours and fifteen minutes,
that’s not a big difference,
and that’s not even counting extracurriculars.
Add those on,
and I’ll bet the two would be about equal.
It’s not like that’s really a very big deal.
I might not like school,
but I do like learning,
and I’m not about to complain.
But it makes me wonder,
when I consider that
when you’re asked to picture a teenager,
you either think
drugs and scandal and stuff
or else you think – school.
And I’m anything but a raucous party girl,
but I wonder –
is school my life for the next eight years?
For that matter,
if school isn’t, what is?
Homework? Writing? Friends? Music?
This is the reason I try not to think too hard about the fabric of life.
Even simple math
and gentle little tugs
make it tear.
