The definition of apathy is a lack of feeling or emotion: impassiveness, or lack of interest or concern: indifference.

Whether a person cares about something to a certain degree, at some point, everyone will experience apathy. 

Apathy is an emotion I feel towards school most days of the year. I find it hard to overcome, especially when it comes to school. It’s hard to get myself up and out of bed at the crack of dawn, and I highly anticipate sitting in a chair and listening to instructions for six hours. 

Apathy might be a universal vibe in the mornings, excluding the few days of the year when waking up seems like an afterthought as the day brings new excitement or changing conditions. 

School gets my apathy for many reasons. 

For one, there is no variation in a typical school day. Wake up, drive to the building, first hour, walk, second hour, walk, third hour, walk, fourth hour, lunch, walk, fifth hour, walk, and finally, sixth hour before finally heading home to sit and do homework. I write more than I say most days. My hand is stained with pencil lead, and my computer needs charging. And without fail, the first thirty minutes home are used to try and shake the feeling of lingering staleness I gain from being in the same building with hundreds of other students. 

I don’t care for lighting. Artificial lights with yellow tints, half-dark half-lit. five out of six classrooms that I attend class in have no windows. The sixth almost always without fail have the blinds shut, even on nice sunny days. The hallways with windows are fleeting, with sparse images of a parking lot and grassy squares. Generations of students beat down the concrete and sheer tile shine with haze, and the carpet. 

I find it hard to care for the boys who constantly sit in three or four to two seats in my science class. They speak too loud and throw miscellaneous items at each other. I care less when the teacher does nothing to stop and try to power through an impossible lesson. 

I care little for the chaos in the halls, when people walk too slowly or stand there, forcing the flow of students to part like a river around rocks.

I could not even begin to care less for the numbers and letters that make up my academics. Fake labels determine my skills and deviate when I merely forget to hit the turn-in. Others strive for these symbols on a screen, but they can only signify purpose on a two-dimensional screen compared to my sprawling art on a canvas. 

They care to try and learn with a teacher’s style when it changes from class to class like a flipping film. Too fast and little to even bother diving in when all that entails is getting right back out. The jarring transitions to different folders and binders, an unkempt, unending pile of loose paper covered in ink, and a few pencil scratches weigh my bag on my shoulder. 

I don’t care to wear comfortable things, as I know being warm or cold the entire day won’t last. The English room is like a jungle, humid and warm, and my math class has a cold breeze of a lake that strikes shiver down my arms.  

Repetition of endless patterns, no change, and no choice, I’m stuck in an endless loop, being told all I can do is keep spinning until I’m spun out of motion. I am tired, the type of haze that sticks to my brain like dirty fuzz, unable to comprehend when I need to solve for X or when to read a sentence. 

I await the day when I can finally change my average day to something better, new, and different. I’m told it’s coming but from here it’s like finding the horizon on a cloudy day. 

Will there ever be a typical day that I care about? Maybe, but I only push away apathy when others can do the same.