when she took the time to stop and evaluate the situation, she couldn't help but see that things could be better, but they could be worse. this, of course, was not what anyone wanted to hear- but she was unable to stop the words from crossing her lips. she'd long ago passed the point where she was able to paste a giant smile on her face and say "things are fantastic". no matter how many times she told herself that, the lie was in no way becoming true. things were pretty much as far from fantastic as they could be. perhaps they could get worse, but to her they needed to get a whole lot better before she'd consider them to be okay.
to be better she'd need to be inspired, to be challenged, to be intellectually stimulated. instead she sat through mindless classes, watching her IQ plummet and her vocabulary diminish. the thought of writing an essay where she'd need to debate or even just to compare and contrast made her heart and mind ache for the institution she'd been all too ready to run away from.
regret was something she tried to avoid thinking about when she thought of this place- choosing instead to see it as a means to an end, a way to get yet another piece of paper to certify she was ready for the real working world. she just wasn't sure she'd be able to survive the time to get to the certification. she evaluated what she'd "learned" and discovered it to be nothing more than labels for her existing knowledge and intuition. she evaluated what potential there was for learning and found it hard to breathe. how painful each day here was. how much she yearned to think, to be challenged, to do.
she had at one point thought she'd love aspects of this place- but the people were becoming frustrating as peers (but wonderful as individuals) and she wanted to be challenged- not to always be the one doing the challenging. she had always tried to avoid expectations for just this reason- because when people or things don't live up to them she always felt that she lost a piece of herself. and that's just what this place was doing- causing her to lose herself one piece at a time.
