SCHOOL IS SO YEAH!!!!

30/7/25  - Dude I had such an eventful and exciting day, so obviously I have to blog about it. 

So I heard on Monday that my whole year group was participating in this Day long program called RIOT (Resilience In Our Teens, Not Paramore.) from my school’s Instagram page, but the thing is they accidentally put the date as Wednesday JUNE 30th, not Wednesday July 30th. So being me, I left a smartass comment under it “I can't wait for June to come”, thought nothing of it and moved through my day. 

Aside from that, I was totally bummed out cause my Wednesdays are the only days I don't have hospitality so when I went to school today completely forgetting about it I was upset upon remembering, Almost everyone around me including my friends had the same attitude towards today and I'm guessing the teachers picked up on it. Because one of our “RIOT Staff Members” (teacher) voiced it immediately when picking up the microphone - and it made me think that I should give this a chance and be less negative. 

AND I DONT REGRET IT AT ALL!!! 

SO one of the first things we got to was choosing a group leader, we were already sectioned off into our Homeroom class, so it wasn't all too hard and everyone ended up picking one of the more out-there guys among us all. 

Basically the schedule summed up was a slide presentation explaining aspects of resilience through mental health and how the human brain reacts to certain situations & why which was accompanied by very frequent activities in-between. It wasn't like any old boring talk, the teachers (all of them took turns hosting) were vulnerable with the students and made sure to keep our attention.

For example, two teachers were hosting their section together, I'll call them Webster and Pendant. 

For their section they were explaining how to not flip the fuck out in emotionally intense situations, Webster had the mic - and she's talking blablabla – everyone's getting bored, some people have their heads down on the table and all of sudden you hear....

CRASH!! From the doors of the hall, Pendant storms up to Webster and starts going off at her. 

“WHY DID YOU TELL MRS THAT I WAS VAPING IN THE BATHROOMS!?!?!” 

“ITS NOT MY FAULT – YOU’RE THE ONE WHO DID IT IN THE FIRST PLACE” 

Followed by a bunch of loud (fake) squabbling and dramatic fake fight where Pendant falls to the floor and Webster puts her arms up in the air like a WWE Champ. 

It’s things like this that I love my teachers for. They really know how to have fun. Plus it grabbed everyone’s attention until the next activity. 

Anyways – more student involvement talk. 

ALL of these activities were so fun, I had never really connected with everyone in my Homeroom like this up till this point. But the activity that stood out to me the most was this round of Jeopardy at the end of the day after lunch, questions all based on what we had learnt the entire day. It started off normally, whichever table group had their hand up first would get to answer a question for points but after 3-4 questions were run through there was a mini-game event. BUT halfway through this Jeopardy activity the Teachers got bored of the “hand up first” system and started something new, whoever could give a very specific item first would allow their team to answer a question. So my  team is all tense, I'm hyping us up, we're all buzzed.

“The first item is…Shoelace” 

I COMPLETELY FREAKED OUT, EVERYONE IN THE HALL WAS CONFUSED AND PAUSED FOR A MOMENT AND ONCE IT KICKED INTO MY SILLY LITTLE BRAIN I TOOK MY SHOELACES OFF FASTER THAN I HAVE EVER NEEDED TO IN MY LIFE, LEAPED UP AND HANDED IT TO MY TEACHER JUST TO TURN AROUND BACK TO MY TEAM AND SHARE A SCREAM OF VICTORY – IT WAS SO AWESOME!!! The other teams just looked at us as we all shared our little win with smiles and confidence. 

This little game of giving random shit went on until one of the teachers voiced their concern in our “safety” so we went back to the same old routine later on ( ╥ ᴗ ╥). 

But about the minigames…so how they were set up was that there were about 7-8 or so cards (laminated pieces of paper) on the stage of the hall, whoever was chosen for the mini-game would determine their fate by picking one of these cards that involved what they had to do. There was regular stuff, finish the lyrics, public speaking and find “__” in the box. 

This one mini-game stood out the most to me though, it was a game of russian roulette with drinking. There was one tiny cup of vinegar, and one cup of water. The girl who was chosen drank the water but then the teachers had this OTHER bright idea…

“Whoever drinks this cup gets their team 200 points.” MY FRIEND SPRUNG UP, RUSHED TO THE FRONT AND GRABBED THE CUP OF VINEGAR, He held it up to the sky as it was Jesus’ body & blood and guzzled it down like a dehydrated war veteran (mind u this guy was driving half of my friendgroup home). 

ANYWAYS BUT THIS VINEGEAR THING PROCEEDED INTO THE COCA COLA VERSION OF THIS MINIGAME BUT WITH SOY SAUCE, EVERYONE WAS SO WILLING TO DRINK THIS SHIT TO THE POINT THE TEACHERS HAD ANNOOOTHER IDEA. 

Some teachers gathered around a cup and the bottles of coke, water, vinegar and soy and created some potion ass drinks. “ANYONE WHO DRINKS THIS WILL SCORE THEIR GROUP 1000 POINTS” A timid boy was nominated and encouraged by his whole group, it felt like a moment in some coming-of-age movie, everyone was banging on the tables to hype him up, he looks at the cup in absolute fear and embarrassment, takes a sip, everyone stops. And….he chokes - luckily his mate on his team got up and tugged the cup off of him to finish.  

So much talk surrounding Jeopardy, but not the actual game - so lets finish this long ass share with that. 

So there was one special section “Who Said It?” which basically featured moments among students in our year, for example one of the questions was “Who did a queen wave while being wheeled off to the office?”. 

Anyways, we get up to “Who did it? - 200 point question” and in there reads, 

Who posted a comment underneath the schools post about today from Monday  - “I can't wait for June to come”

I FLUNG MY HEAD TO THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF ME, FACING MY FRIENDS TABLE, JUST TO HEAR THE MOST EAR RINGING CACKLING COME OUT OF HER TOTALLY DIRECTED AT ME. My face went all red, and I sunk into my seat as all of my team members looked at me in confusion, as the whole hall went SILENT. Nobody knew who it was. My team caught on and took it as a chance to remind me to be calm, as if I drew more attention to myself - the team answering would win. Also, since my friend was here LAUGHING HER HEAD OFF all the attention was drawn to her. 

“Barlow…?” the team answering fumbled. 

And my team went calm. 

I don't actually find it embarrassing. It was extremely funny because I didn't think they were going to acknowledge it in front of the entire year group. I had a good laugh about it to myself as I was walking home. 

There's so much more I could include but I think I'd have to bring it into a separate blog, but to sum it all up, I really loved my team, we had never bonded beyond this before and for each activity, everyone shined in their own element. I think I showed this co-leading role, as I do have confidence around those who I know, even from the smallest scale. Today was filled with fun dramas and an exciting amount of involvement. 

XO Erin