“Who is the more foolish? The fool or the fool who follows him?”

With former GamersMark.com Handheld Manager Osei Tyson gone from the GamersMark scene, I’ve decided to continue his “legacy” with the fifth entry in our Diary of Rants & Raves editorials… Osei, you may have been one annoying spoiled brat, but I have to hand it to you, some of thing ideas you came up with occasionally made me believe you weren’t a twelve year old punk from Rockaway, New York.

Well everyone, school is back in session…making our summers officially over. It’s sad, I know. But don’t fret; someone always has it worse than you. Take me for example... Since as long as I can remember, I’ve been attending private schools. Going to school with a button downed t-shirt, black tie, and sometimes the alternative of a hideous polo shirt… and sorry folks, the days of the hot Catholic school Girl with knee highs and skirts barely covering the bottom of their ass cheeks are practically over, because that my friend is a dying breed. Anyways, you could imagine that my parents have spent a great deal of cash on my education for well over a decade, but in my junior year of high school at Saint Francis Prep in Fresh Meadows, New York I became a negligent fool. I cut classes more than I ever did before, simply going to the cafeteria to spend some time with friends or a chick I wanted to rail badly. Often, I even cut class just to go to the Computer Lab and post a news update for this very site. On top of that, I was a bit of a trouble maker, never shutting up in class, pissing teachers off to the extent where I saw the Dean so often that every secretary, priest, etc… in the Dean’s Office knew me on a first name basis. The end result? I got the boot. With only one year left at Prep, I flunked out… four failures at the end of the 2nd semester and I was refused admission to come back to the school the following year. So now, I’m in a public school for the very first time in my life with my “off the boat” Greek parents never letting me hear the end of it… “You’re killing me!” my mother tells me… “You fucking asshole, you were our last hope” says my father… and typically my older brother is the only one who doesn’t bust my balls by saying “You were handed your first real defeat in life.” That comment alone had me thinking of change, but it wasn’t until my beautiful and best friend Jessica told me, that education was simply “important for your success”, then it finally registered within my skull.

As I walked down the hallways of Francis Lewis High School today (just a few blocks down the road from my former school), I thought in a way that I never remember thinking before… with the intention of actually doing school work, and doing it well. Of course, other things flowed through my mind throughout the course of the day, such as just cutting the rest of school when fourth period hit (and I almost did, but when I reached the Citgo across the street I made a U-Turn back to school) or thinking if that chick that sat next to me in TV Production class was a ho interested in giving me some “brains”, but I AM determined this time around (about school). Shockingly, I even went to CVS to buy a binder and some looseleaf for class, something that I haven’t done since grammar school, and hell… maybe I’ll even get a school bag and some pens. However, I think I’ve learned a lesson… I always thought that people never change. While I do still believe that statement to be very true, I believe, while we cannot change, what we can do is evolve. Evolve for our own future benefit; for success.

We all have something that we can better ourselves with. Personally, I still have much more deal with, but thanks to this “epiphany” and my increasing ego, I now believe I’m unstoppable.

~ditto~