The Biker

Sometimes school feels like a continuous uphill bike ride.

It’s like you're pedalling and pedalling up a hill and you just can’t get to the top. And you're surrounded by all of these other bikers who you know and like, but they can’t help you pedal because they're busy ridding their own bikes.

You have these teachers who are watching the bikers occasionally yelling encouragement, but they have so many bikers to watch they only remember your name and nothing else. The encouragement feels so shallow.

The teachers sit back and watch the struggling bikers and eat their lunch. They made it up the hill already. They don't really care about you.

You look like every other exhausted pedalling biker. Trying to catch up with the bikers ahead of you, and trying not to fall back to the bikers behind you.

The teachers don't really know you. They don't know the HOURS you put in.

When you win a race, you get an A. An A means so much to you. The A makes it all worth it, until the next race is due. You can't help but think the race is not the hill, it's just one race. There's no time to celebrate your achievement because there's still too many bikers ahead of you. And too many more races to win.

And when you lose a race, you get a F. The teachers write down criticism like its nothing, give you Fs like it's nothing. But to you it's everything. It's your hard work being thrown in your face. All that pedalling becomes worthless even though you spent so much time, and pedalled so hard. It's a defeat, one that breaks your spirit, but there's no time to mourn, you still have to pedal on. You can't risk falling any farther behind.

You try to distinguish yourself from the other bikers. You hope that one day a teacher will notice your hard work and give you an honourable mention for the great pedalling you're doing, but you’re so average that it’s almost impossible. Even though you tried so hard, you're just another biker. The teacher never calls your name.

Sometimes you wish that you could just stop pedalling. Just go down the hill and disappear, but you wouldn’t just disappear if you stopped pedalling, you’d fall. You'd fall down the hill and break your neck, and then what?

Everyone sees you die.

So you don’t stop pedalling even though you’re stuck in an endless cycle of exhaustion. You don’t stop and you just pedal and pedal and pedal all day and everyday.

Some days are worse than others as most things are.

Some days you just have a little leg cramp, other days it feels like your ankles have fallen off, your back has broken and your legs are nothing but useless stubs.

But you still pedal on.

One might think wow! What a resilient student. But that’s not the truth, because you know if you stop pedalling you’ll fall down the hill, and you just don’t have the guts to handle a fall like that.

You can't have all your years of pedalling wasted. There’s no guarantee you’ll reach the top even if you keep pedalling, but there is a guarantee of falling down the hill if you stop.

You would rather have the potential to reach the top to have all those years of pedalling and something to show for it, than to just stop and fall.

Even though you're exhausted and feel like falling, you WANT to fall, but you just can’t, you can’t waste it, you can’t stop, you’ve been doing it all your life.

Why not keep going? Why not try to get to the top?

You know one day you won't be a biker anymore. That you will get to the top. You will have something to show for it.

You can only hope that it's worth the ride.

Citations:

6 Problems with Our School System - Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okpg-lVWLbE.

Flashman, Johanna. “12 Gear Essentials You Need for Mountain Biking.” SELF, 5 Nov. 2021, https://www.self.com/story/mountain-biking-gear.