Note: I started this on 11/11, didn't finish it. Posted today, 15/12.
Light, compact, but lengthy text. I'm stuck in an annoying and boring class, so I've decided to spend my time with one of the only pastimes we can have here: writing. Below, my official ranking of the school subjects, accounting all criteria - personal affinity, teachers, difficulty, classes, exams and schoolwork:

1º: Chemistry
2º: Physics
3º: Biology
4º: Math
↑ Good subjects ↑

↓ Bad subjects ↓
5º: Geography
6º: Portuguese
7º: Philosophy
8º: Sociology
9º: Art
10º: English
11º: History

I have a special love for the natural sciences area. I think it's so impressive how humans managed to sintetize laws that govern the whole universe and that this knowledge is available to us today. Even though I don't have the mental capacity to fully understand more complicated topics, it's still awesome.

Chemistry: love love you. Have you ever thought that everything around you is made from incomprehensibly tiny and energetic atoms? And that you can react them at your will to create an infinity of substances, as long as you have the means to do so? Although it's hard to control them experimentally. I have a hard time comprehending how characteristics, colors, scents and tastes originate from the atoms. Besides that, all my chemistry teachers were great and I never had any difficulty with it. 10/10.

Physics: the almighty. It explained to me things that I never bothered to ask about. But physicists really like to simplify situations, no? You want to calculate free fall time? Alright, but take in account a point particle, g=10.0 and don't even mention air friction.
The teachers were great, but I've had some difficulty learning. On the exams criteria, you'll find that they can really complicate the tests if the examiners are in a bad mood. High difficulty. Grade: 10/10.

Biology: I really like microbiology and human anatomy. It's bizarre to think that living beings emerged as simple molecular groups and billions and millions of years after, spontaneous transformations happened and that originated such uniquely complex mechanisms like the brain to the point of conceiving something so ethereal as the soul and thought...! And even so, we function using electrical impulses, chemical substances and cells...!
That aside, biology is too much memorabilia - and by that I mean you need to accept and memorize way too much. Hate that. You need to know the name of a disease, bacteria, organ, classification... And when you least expect, the exam has a super-specific question about something and you're the one who gets screwed. Moreover, I've had really good and really bad teachers. Medium difficulty. Grade: 8/10.

Math: all depends on it. The universe can't exist "without math", because it's intrinsic to everything, including society. Essential math concepts were established more than 4 millenia ago, coming from the sumerians, arabs and chinese and we use them to this day. By the way, kudos to the chinese for developing complicated concepts thousands of years ago and independently. As a school subject, though, it could be better... Many topics and formulas are tackled without explaining the origins or demonstration. Teachers: ranging from good to excruciantingly bad. Another plus: generally there's no group projects in this subject. High difficulty; I hate combinatorics and probability. Grade: 7/10.

From this point on, we have the BAD subjects, from the least worse (geography) to the terrible (history).

Geography: covers many topics: natural geography, human, technical... My favorite is the natural one. It piques my interest a little. Human geography is basically "bla bla poverty... zzz globalization... bla bla global north..." and technical is... whatever, geosensing, tractors and farming techniques. Is it important to society? Sure, a lot. But I don't like it. The teachers are ok and average and there's too many group projects. This year I literally learned NOTHING on geography classes. 7/10.

Portuguese(+Literature): portuguese is a really beautiful language, but studying it is such a pain in the ass. I HATE syntax. Never managed to understand it. This is probably the subject with the most amount of work and group projects to do. I do like literature, I learned a lot about national literature these past years and I've come to appreciate it more. I even read the mandatory books (rare! no one does that), but I'm not a fan of reading in class. I never had any male portuguese teachers, they were all women and they were ok and some kinda crazy. 6/10.

Philosophy: it's interesting having a subject partially dedicated to making the students reflect and think (some can't do that), but I prefer to keep my thoughts about these topics to myself, not commenting on these classes. The contents are too much memorabilia too. Nice and bad teachers, annoying difficulty (memorabilia), more work than necessary. TLDR: we only study philosophy because it's on the exams. 5/10.

Sociology: Karl Marx, Durkheim, Max Weber. Max Weber, Durkheim, Karl Marx. Every year the same shit. And when it's not that, it's memorabilia on the name of people I've never heard about and stupid theories. I believe that exploding sociology from the surface of the Earth would be a big favor for all students. If that's not possible, taking it out from entrance exams would be a great help as well: EsPCEx does not have philosophy or sociology and I ain't hearing anyone complaining. I've only had one teacher and he's kinda airheaded. Way too many group projects. Grade 4/10.

Art: the subject that no one cares about until there's a test. I had the experimental side with drawings, making stuff up... Did not like it, way too much effort. Now it's only theory: I don't like as well, too dull. I love romanticism and impressionism, they have some really beautiful paintings. Absolutely HATE Dada. That is NOT art. In general, too much schoolwork, ok teachers, annoying difficulty (a bit of memorization). 4/10.

English: "hello students... Today we're going to study the verb 'to be'..." from the first grade of elementary school up to sixth grade. They do try to teach something, but since it's in school, there's no progression and we're always stuck on the same shit. Those who have no interest only study to pass the exam and those who are interested generally can't gain anything from it. In highscool it's focused on reading texts, aiming for ENEM always. And on ENEM there's only text interpretation. Alas, the best way of learning is still practicing. WAY too many group projects and. Oh God. Probably the worst teachers I've ever had. Alright, I've had some cool and nice ones (shoutout to my last year's teacher Mr. F., he's cool) but Beelzebub itself gave me classes this year disguised as a nosy forty-something woman with the fakest smile I've ever seen and a passive-agressive attitude that geTS ON MY NERVES. Final grade: 2/10.

History: Here we are, the worst subject in my opinion. Oh my God, so much memorabilia of useless stuff! No, teacher, I don't want and don't need to learn about mesopotamian civilizations, greek social classes, the english kings' lineage, the name of 100 treaties, another 50 leaders of failed rebellions, the poor european farmers, the regents of Brazil, the dates of each event..! I need to comprehend, not memorize. At least we're over the age of asking about dates. History IS important, but... God. It's all so focused on Europe, as well. I'm forced to learn about the stupid and ugly peasants that planted wheat and the equally stupid and ugly nobles that only knew how to eat on west Europe during the Middle Ages while the Middle East and Far East were developing science, medicine and advanced societies at the same time.
There's more. Differently from english, that I can ignore the teacher, easily skip over studying and still do well on exams, I need to pay attention on history classes or I'm doomed. Well, I can't really understand the lessons and I'm almost always drowzy, so I need to study at home later anyways. And, damn, I think I've never had an actually good history teacher, they range from ok to excruciantingly bad. Of course, who wants to get a degree in history in this day and age? There's a teacher, VH, that's autistic and knows more about CR7, medicinal properties of eating aloe vera and unripe bananas and conspiracy theories about the government than giving lessons. In fact, I think he never actually gave a real lesson. Oh well.
What about the rest? Too many group projects. Medium to high difficulty, effort is needed and they can complicate the exams if wanted. Final grade: 1/10. See me after class.


Honorable mentions:
P.E: necessary to get out from those wretched classrooms and cool if you're good at sports. But sometimes I felt too lazy to play.
Life project: I haaate youu, New Highschool Modeeeelll!!!!

Ah yes, english. The universal language with its inconsistent pronunciation, stolen vocabulary, genderless words and a surprising amount of native speakers who can't differenciate "they're" from "their". What's there to talk about it?

My relationship with the english language began alongside my relationship with the house computer when I was 7. Most game sites were in english, so there was nothing that I could do besides learning it to use them. Add that to Youtube, that I discovered soon after, and to my Ps2 games, and there you have it: my "professional" academic formation on the anglophone language. Some friends who know english really well were taught the same way: with a lot of time on the internet.

The internet is really useful, isn't it? If I didn't have this possibility back then, now I wouldn't have this site, I wouldn't know about the infinity of english content and I would probably be trapped in one of those english courses that promise fluency but all they do is squeeze money out of the poor students. I hate you, english courses!!

But I gotta confess that it's not a quick learning method. I think I became "reasonably" fluent around 15; my writing was dogshit before then. The absence of grammar on youtube comments doesn't help as well. Right now, my problem is that I have too much input (listening and mainly reading) but little output (speaking and writing), so my pronunciation is quite rusty. Keeping this blog updated in english has helped, but I hate when I've known the word my entire life, but when it's needed, I forget it. And I still don't know when to use "in", "on" and "at" in some expressions.
Like check this out: to translate this text, I had to appeal to the dictionary 11 times.

By the way, I feel like my vocabulary is not enough to truly express myself... I can never get that specific word or phrase to convey exactly what I'm thinking: it's enough, but not really what I wanted. These texts that I write here are better in portuguese than english. I think that's a problem that's going to haunt me forever...

I pity the kids who are going to follow this internet path nowadays. All they're going to learn is "did bro just...?", "bro has unbelievable rizz" and "sybau, you pmo". I've been trying to keep up with these totally fabricated slangs they're using, but it's probably for the best to let them pass by.

I apologize if this text sounds rude or snobbish. I wish everyone had the opportunity to learn another language, because it's an awesome experience. But I pray for them to not fall to the lies of the language courses or Duolingo. I hate you, Duolingo!! I pray everyday for your downfall!

Right now I want to learn italian, but I don't have enough time!! And I can't learn through osmosis like I did with english because it would take forever. In a distant future, I want to learn german as well. I hope I manage to, but imagine if english was a lucky shot and I actually don't have any potential? Scary...

My inspiration - but not goal, because it's impossible - is Guimarães Rosa:
"I speak: portuguese, german, french, english, spanish, italian, esperanto, a little of russian; I read: swedish, dutch, latin and greek (with the dictionary on hands); I comprehend some german dialects; I studied the grammar of: hungarian, arabic, sanskrit, lithuanian, polish, tupi, hebrew, japanese, czech, finnish, danish; I studied others a little. But not much." This guy rocks...

By the way, here's a controversial opinion: I think italian is closer to portuguese and easier than spanish. In the past, I used to despise spanish, but I've come to love both the language and the "hermanos" who, ignoring the language barrier, are in the same boat as us. I love you, hermanos!

Birds are the greatest symbol of simple freedom which this world is capable of providing. And it's precisely because of my longing for freedom that I wish I were a little bird.

I want you to paint this scene: flying through the lush and verdant fields, feeling the midday, warm spring sunlight and the gentle flowing breeze. Between earth and sky, just me, or you, and the clouds. It's the most sublime freedom there is.

Often while I'm confined to the classroom, I see some birds outside, chirping, pecking the ground, watching the surroundings and I think something like that. My first desire is to escape school, but thinking better, I see that I'm also searching for release from my responsabilities. I'm really envious of these wrens, that don't have to do anything besides eating and singing nature's ode. They don't know how hard we have it. How naïve they are, because a bird only values its freedom when it's caged.

I've already thought about becoming a cat. Later I realized that the feline way of life wouldn't fit me. I thought about becoming a harpy, Amazon's giant bird, but the aggressive temper doesn't match me as well. The one who resonated the most with me was the little swallow or budgie... Their simplicity fascinates me.

If reencarnation's real, I hope my karma leads me this way. However, for now, what we can do is to live life like them: lightheartedly and with happiness.

Have you stopped to listen to the birds today?

This question is as old as time: what is the best superpower to have? I bring for you, in this text, my opinion, which is undoubtedly, for sure, the correct one.

If I found a genie lamp, my first - and maybe only - wish would be like this:

"I wish to have the power to go back in time, bringing along the whole universe, but I get to keep my memories and physical changes."

It works like this: I can return to any time of my life like a rewind. This way I can avoid all time-paradox related problems, since the only changes happen on me. I need to relive it all over again, though. Can't jump forward.

With this power, the first thing to do is wait for the lotto, memorize the numbers, go back and boom!! I'm already rich af. I could ace any exam, if I wanted to get a job, be the world's best goalkeeper, if I wanted to get an awesome job, try out any hyphotesis without regrets... Et cetera. All the stuff that everyone wishes for.

Can't forget the time saving aspect as well: I watch something, I rewind, I go to the gym, I rewind again - without losing progress! -, I study, rewind... Don't want to wake up in the morning? Just go back to late night and sleep again, as much as you want. Tecnically, it's also possible to eat infinitely. There's just good points!!

I Could go back to my childhood and live everything again with today's knowledge. It could be interesting and weird missing someone who I haven't met yet. Just as I could fix my mistakes, I could stay when I was 7 years old forever and avoid all that.

There you have it, my opinion. There's no way to opt for flight, invisibility or teleportation (even though this is the 2º best) after these arguments. Sadly, since we live in a dull reality, I won't be blessed with this power, and all that I can do is dream about it. It is what it is.

(18/08) One more thing: Here's 2 cool videos about the subject:
PolarSaurusRex: What if we could reset life and retain all memories
Lewis' nice view on the same matter.

Grant Wisler: If we could set checkpoints in Real life
A silly skit (with a huge plot twist )

Gyms are that kind of place where you can find all sorts of people:
teens, grandpas, skeletons, fatties, bodybuilders, nerds, bodybuilder grandpas as well and even children (the ones that almost get killed on the machines). And in all of my ocasional trips to the gym, one group has always caught my attention: the unemployed.

It's hard to define, but when I see one of these, I immediately think to myself "look, that one is definitely unemployed". To me, this class includes the guys that graduated from high school years ago but still look like teenagers, practically live on the gym and generally are very ripped.

Ok, it might be a little biased, but let's agree that the 20yo guy that's going to the gym everyday probably doesn't have a job. I look at them and think:
- "What do they do outside the gym? What's he thinking? Is he happy?"-
Considering that they are really lean, they're probably happy. Or not. I would be, personally.

Actually, this judgment of mine with the gym unemployed comes from a fear that I have of ending up in the same situation: just graduated, I wasn't approved on college entrance exams and I'll have to go through an entire year of studying and having anxiety crisis. After all, everything that just-graduates know how to do is sleeping, playing games, going to the gym and having existential crisis.

Maybe it might turn out to not be like how I think, maybe they do, in fact, have a job and are very hardworking people. I can't truly know because, in the end, the only time that I see them is in the gym, which is just a small slice of their lives. My only hope is that I can skip this phase of being an Unemployed of the Gym and skip the part where a nosy kid writes a dissertation about me.

This text was inspired by the guy that I saw at the gym on February that led me to write this. Thank you, founding father of the unemployed class.