Does art imitate life? I don’t know, but monopoly does. Monopoly was created to teach the public about the consequences of the economy and taxation. It’s not supposed to be fun, yet every day, families sit around the table to play a four hour game of monopoly. There’s better games out there, yet we come back to this game that just makes us angry and spiteful. Why do we do this?

People love to compete, and people all have different strategies when trying to win. Some people buy everything they land on and don’t use any buildings. Some people only buy certain properties so they have enough money to buy high rises. Some people barely buy anything, focusing on avoiding properties of others. Some people just do what feels right in the moment. Some people play until they begin to lose, throw and tantrum and ruin the game for everyone else.

But when it comes to monopoly, it doesn’t really matter what you do or how you play. No matter your strategy, the roll of the dice makes it random. You can’t train at monopoly. You can probably get better, and if you look at analytically you’ll probably figure out which strategy works best, but monopoly isn’t chess. You could have the best strategy in the world and still, lose to someone playing on the basis that they’ll buy the blue properties because that’s their favourite colour. Monopoly isn’t a fair game, but neither is life. No matter what you do to try to avoid it, there’s always a chance of rolling the wrong number and getting sent straight to jail, without passing go.

I always get criticized for this being pessimistic in these things, but I don’t think what I’m saying now is pessimistic. There’s a difference between pessimism and realism. You can’t control everything in life, and that’s what I think I know now that I didn’t know last year. I mean, I always knew that, but I never accepted what I could and couldn’t control. And it made me afraid of everything.

At first glance it might sound like I’m saying that I’m no longer taking responsibility, but that’s not what I mean. I mean that there are some things you can control, and some things you can’t, and focusing on the things you can’t control is idiotic. I can’t control if iMovie crashes and I lose all my progress on a video. However, I figured out that I can control if I use iMovie or not, which is why I ditched my first southwest video and downloaded Final Cut Pro. I’ve realized there’s not one path to success, and there’s always other options.

I never played to my strengths because I refused to acknowledge them, and then I would get upset because everything was awful. For the first time, I am going to take responsibility. I know exactly why my work was the way it was. I always know why my work is the way it is, even if I pretend I don’t. I promise you, I’m actually pretty self-aware. It was just easier to pretend I wasn’t.

I’m never going be a 95% student in everything, because I’m never going to try that hard, in that way. I no longer expect myself to do that, because I know I’m just not going to do it. It’s not because I’m a bad student or a bad worker, I just can’t bring myself to care about stuff I don’t care about. I could go off, and blame the education system for how grades work and how it’s not fair and everything, but I’m also not going to do that. I am who I am. I am going to work hard next year, but I do not expect to be a perfect student. I am going to get good grades, get into university, and I’ve decided that that is going to be enough. I don’t need to be the best because I have other things going for me, and I realize that I’m still growing and changing and I don’t always have to be the best version of myself in high school.

Despite this, I don’t have bad grades. I’ve always been on honour roll with distinction. That’s not because I work really hard at everything, It’s because I choose to spend my extra time doing extra classes where I do get 95%, and those classes push me over the top, canceling out my weaknesses. And I know that if I really really tried, I probably could get at least 90% in all my classes, so maybe I’ll try that next year, but if life gets in the way it’s not going to be the end of the world. This year I had a complete mental breakdown and I managed to bounce back. Sure, some of my work took a hit but honestly I really don’t care because I’m happy again.

In grade 12, I’m going to stop setting ridiculous expectations for myself that I know I’m never going to meet. I think I can actually try harder and do better when I stop doing that, because I can start focusing on what I actually can do. I’m getting to the age where I’m almost ready to leave high school, and if I enter university still doing things I don’t like, or I’m not good at because I think I should be good at it, I’m going to be miserable.

Next year, I plan to focus on myself as I am, not who I think I should be. I spent a lot of years having people tell me I was smart, and then some-odd years having people ask me what happened. I know a lot of stuff, but it’s not stuff that most people deem important, so in a lot of peoples eyes I went from smart to vapid. That doesn’t make you want to learn, it makes you want to quit, constantly. Whatever “potentional” everyone wants to me to fulfill, I don’t care anymore. I’ve got my own goals, and at this point, that is going to be doing a good job at my prerequisites to leave high school.

When I do leave, I hope that I’ll know how to deal with it when I get sent to jail.

(That’s another monopoly metaphor, I’m not a criminal)