Fatma

I recently found out that I passed all of my GCSEs and I’ve been accepted into the college that I want to go to. I was honestly surprised when I saw that I hadn’t failed anything–I guess I have to have more faith in myself. I wrote about this in my diary: I say “I’ve got to stop feeding my self-doubt and just learn from my mistakes and become the winner that I am.” I texted my brother about being accepted into college. He said, “WINNER! Well done. I’m very proud of you.” That made me really happy–I don’t remember my brother ever telling me he was proud of me before.

I’ve been reading Frankenstein recently. There’s a part where Victor Frankenstein is talking about a professor at his university. He says, “His gentleness was never tinged by dogmatism.” This made me think about how the people who know who they are aren’t affected by the dogmas of life. There was always a rare group of kids who I remember being made fun of in school who truly didn’t care about what people thought of them. I guess they were the true winners–they weren’t changed by the set structure and rules that school forced down their throats, whilst the people who made fun of them were having an identity crisis on the weekends because they were copying their friends and didn’t know who they truly were.

I visited my grandparents yesterday and some other relatives were also there. There were two little boys (one was born in 2007 and the other was born in 2012). When I told them that I was born in 2002, they looked at me like I was ancient. They’re obsessed with phones and YouTube–it made me sad, but the world is changing, and there are always positives that come along with change. I explained what a VHS tape was to them and it blew their minds. Before they arrived, my sister, my grandma, and I were talking about what teenagers used to look like in the early 2000s. My grandma said that they looked like Dracula (long, black leather coats). My sister explained to my grandma that I like the early 2000s–my grandma understood. She said people were closer and more grateful then. When it got late, my grandfather drove us home, whilst a radio station that only played ’80s pop was playing on the car stereo. The sun was strong and blinded us when it peeked through the bushes, but it was setting. My grandfather was talking about how things aren’t the same as how they used to be–things are different now. He witnessed so many changes whilst living in England (from the ’70s to the ’90s to the 2000s–iconic times). He always says that “the good days are over, my friend.” Maybe he’s right. It’s cool to imagine him driving down a sandy desert road, listening to ’80s hits and wishing he could get away from it all and go back to a time when everything was alright. ♦