The waiting game is a ruthless and relentless foe. It can be seen in the form of an unreturned phone call, a delayed arrival at school, or unanswered questions about what’s next. It hangs over our heads like a dark cloud and we’re never really sure when it will rain on us again. This blog post explores life in Lance School through the lens of the waiting game: that unavoidable, often frustrating experience that we all know well.
On the first day of school, everyone is pumped. We know who our friends are, where our lockers are, and what teachers we have for the year. It was all so simple back then. We could easily predict what would happen next because there wasn’t much to be done other than go to classes, eat lunch with our friends, and find out what homework assignments were due for the next day. But now it’s different.
Things are starting to get complicated in life after Lance School. Some of our friends have moved away, classes are harder, and many of us are making plans to go to college across the country next year. All of this means that we simply cannot predict what will happen next. And this is where the waiting game gets really interesting.
In school, there are so many unpredictable things that can happen from one day to the next: a new friend, an intimidating assignment, a spontaneous opportunity to help someone else. In life outside of school however, it may not be as easy to find something unpredictable and unexpected. So we wait…
We wait for the weekend, we wait to go home, we wait for the end of the school day. We spend most of our time doing things that are repetitive such as eating lunch every day at the same time, going on a family vacation in August, or spending Christmas with our closest friends. All of this may seem redundant, but we fill in the gaps with opportunities to explore and grow. We hope that there will be a chance at something new, unexpected, and exciting. Because who doesn’t want to feel that their life is full of surprises?
Sometimes though, we find ourselves in situations where we don’t know what we’re doing next. Maybe we didn’t get the grade we wanted in a class and our parents want to talk about it. We may feel like we’re stuck at home when all of our friends are away enjoying themselves in the sun. Perhaps there is a birthday party coming up that we’re not sure whether or not we want to attend. These types of situations can be very frustrating and they make us feel like we’re stuck in a waiting game, but there is always something we can do to make the situation better:
1) We can choose to go home after school or work rather than stay late and push ourselves even harder. We may even be able to cut back on some of our responsibilities for a bit and give ourselves a break.
2) We can ask our friends whether we’d like to do something together rather than staying home on the weekend, watching TV alone. Maybe we could go shopping with them or drive down the coast and see the waves crash against the rocks.
3) We can talk to our parents about how we feel about a certain situation rather than keeping quiet and hoping that they won’t notice. For example, perhaps we’re feeling anxious about a test in a class we don’t really like. If this is the case, then we should tell them how stressed out we are and ask them for their advice.
The waiting game can be a frustrating experience because we don’t know what will happen next, but living life is about looking for opportunities to grow and explore. When something unexpected happens, it may not feel great at first, but there sure are some benefits! We learn new things that can help us broaden our horizons and discover who we are and who we want to be. And that, my friends, is the beauty of the waiting game.
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