As any normal teenager I regularly voice my dislike for school, the teachers are incompetent, the students are idiots and the facilities are a let down. Now I am going to look at the good and bad side of these three things in relation to my own school.

There are many teachers in my school that really do fall under the title 'incompetent', however there are many that don't. There is a certain Art teacher who would do anything to help her students improve, a Maths teacher who puts all her effort into helping her students understand and a German teacher who does all she can for students that don't put in any effort. My experiences with the Art teacher have been nothing but good. She's always there to give advice, she doesn't mind giving tips and she knows how to help us play to our strengths and improve on our weaknesses. Could you really ask for more? I was fortunate enough to have the competent Maths teacher for a year of my schooling. She took her time explaining every topic we covered, she repeated the topics until we understood them enough to attempt the questions and she offered extra help to anyone that was bothered enough to ask for it. It is really difficult to find a teacher that genuinely cares about their students as much as she does. Now for the German teacher. Yes she put all her effort in to helping us but she was also strict and took 'no crap from no one'. She put in the effort and she expected you to do it too. If you didn't respect her then you were better off skipping class, she showed no mercy. These are just a sample of the good teachers in my school but, as you know, where there's good, there's bad.

A certain teacher in my school has been given more power than any teacher should ever have. When he walks into a room everyone goes quiet. The squeaking of his shoes on the linoleum of the hallways is enough to make even the bravest of students hold their breath in fear. Why he is so feared I do not know. A man that idolizes butterflies and seriously neglects his eyebrows should not be feared by such a cynical and superficial generation, yet he is. So what does such a fearful man do? He teaches English and History to uninterested teenagers, well he attempts to. His method of teaching is forcing you to learn his work word for word. If you cannot regurgitate it perfectly, without thinking, when he asks then you simply haven't learned it. I wonder what kind of grade plagiarism gets you. I also wonder how well we will do in college when our English professors simply refuse to give us sample answers and cannot understand why we do not understand simple English.

Now I realise that it is unfair to treat the aforementioned English teacher as the only incompetent teacher. There is another Maths teacher in my school, this one, unfortunately, doesn't quite reach the standard of the other one. If I am being completely honest, she doesn't compare at all. She once taught a class the wrong method for doing a sum. She didn't only do this once though, which makes it even worse. When she is doing what she calls teaching her pupils are sitting, jaws wide open, their eyes practically screaming "What the fuck is she on about". Enough about that teachers though, let's move on to the students.

No matter where you go there is always going to be people you love and people you want to throw into a wood chipper. I am fortunate to have met a lot of lovable people in school. I could not imagine my life without a number of them, they mean a lot to me and make school completely worthwhile. Unfortunately not everyone is as fantastic as the people I surround myself with. Don't take my word for it though, I'm obviously biased. Spend a day around arrogant, bird chirping, sex screaming, swaggering adolescent males with shaven heads and tell me what you make of them. Yes, the boys in my school really do make bird noises during class, they're just that cool. Then they proceed to pick on the guys that don't act like them, you know, the guys that are actually nice to other people. The guys that know the difference between a joke and an insult. Do you remember those guys that used to trip other people up and laugh? Have you ever tried tripping them up and seeing how they react? I've seen it happen. They didn't think it was nearly as funny. Should they really be 'dishing it' if they can't handle it?

Every teenager goes through an awkward phase, an phase that isn't really helped by P.E. Remember those changing rooms? You have to stand there, sweating and smelly, and take your clothes off in front of girls, and guys, that you think are better looking than you. Lovely isn't it? Did your school have showers? Mine doesn't. That's right, you don't even get to rid yourself of the 'sweaty' and 'smelly'. You're left walking around school feeling sweaty, smelly and awkward. School seems even better now doesn't it? Then, when the day is finally over, you have to wrestle with your locker, if you're lucky to have a locker that is. My school doesn't offer them to everyone. You would think that since they don't even need to pay to have enough for everyone they would be able to afford ones that had proper locks. Nobody wants to fight to open their locker at the end of the day. I mean that just adds to the sweating, which adds to the smelling, which in turn adds to the awkward.

Alright, I've said enough mean things about my school, it's time I said something nice. We are lucky to have two fully equipped computer rooms. We have two art rooms, a recently updated music room and kitted out science rooms. In that sense we are lucky, but things could always be better. Instead of spending money on new floors that we really don't need, they could spend money on getting the heating/ ventilation sorted out so that students aren't suffocating or freezing in class. A happy medium really does not exist in my school. It's black and white, no gray areas.

People always say that school years are the best of your life. Those people need to be heavily medicated.