La Bue

I know what you're going through. I had it happen more than once in high school. I tried to be nice. It never worked. One guy guilt-tripped me because his mother committed suicide our sophmore year, and the other guy just followed me everywhere. I started just going to the library to get away from both and the one found me. He'd sit down with my friends and I, nag me to go out with him, and make everyone extremly uncomfortable. I never let him even think I was interested but I was not blunt about it like I should have been, and I didn't want to humilate him infront of my friends. At the end of the year I had to tell him that he was never going to get a girlfriend by nagging them and that I was not going to go out with him. He told me "well i'm gonna keep asking you anways." I was trying to be nice but by following me around for the better part of a year humiliating me and harrassing me he was being completely inconsiderate of my feelings. I went the blunt route, which I think is always the best way to go, and even that didn't deter him. Finally I started to ignore all of his phone calls and after a month of that he stopped trying. You will just have to try to tell her outright that she's wasting your time and hers. Ignore her text messages after you have told her that. I hope it goes well for you.

I really liked Pan's Labyrinth. Visually it's stunning and I actually thought the ending was well done. I never viewed the ending though as having a particular message, maybe I should watch it again, it's been a few months since I have seen it. I really thought it was a very well done with great acting and some really unique visuals, it wasn't what I expected but it was nicely done.

Thanks. I know a degree is not needed to be successful but the degree I am going for will teach me what I need to learn to better my art. I took an animation course at a n art school when I was in 7th grade. It was different and interesting but very hard and not something that's a lot of fun. I thought about cartoons and comics for the longest time, and even bought a tablet to get into computer graphics but none of that felt as fulfilling as fine arts, which was the last thing I thought I would enjoy. I had a teacher say they same thing and I remember just feeling horrified because high school felt the opposite, but I am really excited about college. A lot of the people I went to school with are miserable about starting college and having to work, but I am really excited about all of it. I don't worry at all anymore and I have met a lot of people in the past year, who are nothing more than friends of a friend, but were much easier to get along with and talk with now that I am not worried about how others perceive me and how to fit in. Thanks! Hi. http://philadelphia-89.deviantart.com/ though I am terrible about posting art regularly, I do get better at it. TOOL, Interpol, Amy Whinehouse, Marilyn Manson (before his last album), Slipknot, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Billie Holiday, A Perfect Circle, Olivia Lufkin, Prodigy, Rammstein,...A lot of rock from the 90's and early 2000's. I find myself going back to older music.

While I am not fluent in anything but English, and barely remember French, my best friend is almost completely fluent in Japanese. She started off of those Japanese language discs just as a hobby. She wasn't very good at it but just the discs, after two years of using them, was able to start college in Japan as a exchange student. Now she is almost completely fluent, loves the culture and even considers living there after college. While it isn't what she is majoring in, it has been very important. She still had free time to read and work on art. If you are that interested in learning a foreign language and it's not going to get in the way of you pursuing something else than there is no reason not to do it. Before she went to Japan she could understand Japanese but could barely converse with natives, though it was enough to get her into an exchange program right after high school, that vastly improved her Japanese. Now she is almost completely fluent. She just started learning it as a hobby and from self study but because she really enjoyed it, she was able to apply it to her other classes and life in general without getting in the way of her studies or hobbies.

I had all of those experiences too, though my friends humiliated me in person as well as behind my back. I realized though at the end of my 12th grade year I didn't really care and reading the Fountainhead made me feel confident when I decided to finally break ties. People would talk to me for a while and than blow me off in a cycle that lasted a good two years. I cried all of the time because I thought I would miss out on not having a large group of friends. I only have one real close friend now but I am not upset anymore. I am happy and content to paint. The others always thought I was a prude, uptight, and dull but the only thing that bothered me was the fact that I didn't care and it worried me that I would have little feelings about something everyone else placed so much importance on. It's great that you realize all of that even earlier than I, and I was always ahead and just on a different level. I wasted three years of high school miserable because I was happy the way I was but apparently in the eyes of my peers and teachers it was unhealthy. It really worried me for years that my being happy to do what made me happy and fulfilled was considered a waste of time. I had a lot of anxieties that by not partying and hanging with people who I didn't care for, that I would be missing something out of life. I worried that something was wrong with me because working made me so fulfilled and socializing with people who were shallow and lazy was so unfulfilling, but to everyone else it was the answer, it was what fulfilled all of them. I realized that what makes me happy and fulfilled was always my answer. I know I will eventually meet a few people I have something in common with but that will probably happen naturally as I go to college and work on my chosen career path. When I did things to try to fit in it was never enough and I was always second guessing myself. Now my confidence continues to grow as I do what makes me happy and I rarely ever second guess as decision. I am really happy that I am not the only one of my generation that feels the same way and has dealt with people who will try to bring you down. While I knew that I was not a total freak it was hard to remember that. I also appreciate everyone else's comments and welcomes. The articles were very helpful, especially the article "Advice for Those Considering NCSSM". That was the hardest thing to learn, I didn't have any confidence in myself for years, now that I have, I still feel lonely and the occasional need to talk to someone I can relate to it doesn't weigh me down.

I know that when I am happy I don't feel miserable, tired, angry, or bored. Usually when I am painting and busy I am happiest. There have been many times where I have felt an overwhelmingly elated but I know that I am happiest when I am painting and working on a project because I feel completely content. I feel I can take my time on what I am doing while still looking forward to another thing. I feel no unease or worry. I am just there and content to be, and thrilled to be working on something and learning more. Though while I am always desperately lonely I don't feel any of it when I am happy. when I am happy I like being with my family but I don't feel a need to be social or to call people up, usually I feel that when I am upset. I think happiness is an overall feeling of being content and relaxed. When I am unhappy I talk nonstop, feel bored, and I feel terrible anxiety.

My Name is Clarissa and I just graduated from high school two months ago. I usually don't do introductions on the few forums I have joined in the past but I wanted to ask some questions and explain somethings. I am still really new to Ayn Rand and Objectivism but from what I have read so far a lot of the basic philosophies and principles seem to match my own. At the beginning of my senior year I had been having various problems with my peers and my psychiatrist suggested that I read The Fountainhead. I kind of threw the book in my room and didn't pick it up until two months ago after I realized the people I thought were my friends weren't as nice as I once thought. Throughout 10th, 11th, and the beginning of 12th grade I struggled with my social life. I am not very articulate and I can be pretty shy so people think I am stuck up or just weird. Well I finally made some friends who kept telling me I needed more of a social life. Whenever I hung out with them and their friends I never knew what to say. I didn't like the music they liked, I didn't have the same political views, and I had a passion which is still art. I loved to draw and when I discovered painting earlier this year I realized that it made me happy. People told me for years being more social would make me happy but it just made me miserable and I was usually ignored or insulted. There was one other artist at my school who was as good as I and for some reason people loved him, especially my teacher while she detested me. I couldn't figure out what she loved about him when he was everything she wasn't. I drew pin up and my busty ladies made her uncomfortable but I know I was as good if not better. I tried to compromise last year with nothing but a terrible portfolio to show for it. No matter how hard I worked she still found passive aggressive ways to upset and humiliate me. There was a final end of the year award I knew I earned and she gave it to the guy when he didn't work half as hard. She could have given us both the award but didn't want "to diminish the importance of the award" by giving it to two people. She thought that she could make it up by announcing to a half empty class that the decision was tough and gave me a 2 inch by 2 inch canvas (worthless), an isle to hold the unusable canvas, a bag, and a set of 5 oil paints that could be used with water valued at 10 dollars. She also insulted my mother by saying she did us a favor because my mother couldn't afford better. I had another teacher give me detention for drawing a girl in a bikini on a PSAT book, she said I didn't take the test seriously which is untrue. I missed a field trip to see a court case, I had looked forward to it for months but was forced to take the PSAT exam yet again to "raise the schools PSAT average". The star student wrote his PSAT essay in Spanish on a different subject and the woman laughed gaily saying how cute that was but gave me detention. Because of the detention I missed an important extra credit opportunity in my Trig class, the only class I desperately needed to stay after for. During the detention the teacher showed a substitute from Africa my sketch of the girl in the tight bikini and he shook his head while clicking his tongue. He proceeded to tell me I needed God in my life and the PSAT teacher shook her head in vengeance. Another teacher saw references of a (fully clothed) burlesque model and said out loud in class "what are you looking at! This doesn't look very appropriate. You need to put all this away!". Students have said similar things, one girl said in a tone that the deaf could here "You GAY girl?" Even my friends treated me like crap telling me that I was wasting my time and would miss out on life by not partying, taking drugs, and "having fun". I had many call me close minded for not smoking pot. It just got awful and I realized I hated those people and they probably felt the same way so I stopped sugar coating, back tracking, and appeasing others. I started to say exactly what I thought and what was on my mind and managed to alienate myself in less than two weeks. Now I have one really close friend who was much the same way and treated similar with other art class horror stories to match mine and she is the only one I know from her graduating class who is successful. I finished the Fountainhead almost a month ago and it helped me feel confident and confirmed on my initial thoughts about my peers and how to go about pursuing what makes me happy as well as okay with my decision to not feel with people I hate because some people say one thing or another is good and right. Anyways I start college in September and I just turned 19. This seems like a good forum with a lot of like minded people who are mature. I rarely see that in person and it made high school a very unpleasant but important stage that I am happy to be done with. Has anyone else had any similar experiences as far as high school?