Last Wednesday, I went to go into the men’s room by 200 Hall, and as I pushed the door to enter, I bounced off. I tried it again, just to see if it was a fluke or maybe there was someone on the other side, but no. It was locked.

As the day passed on, I heard several rumors about the bathroom being tagged. This of course seemed completely idiotic and pointless to me, and I heard several of my peers voice similar thoughts.

Why would someone even tag a bathroom? The janitors will just clean it up, so what’s the point? What is there worth tagging about in Cortez?

Many students, including myself, were also upset with the administration for locking the bathroom after the alleged graffiti incident. We were not the ones who had done anything wrong; why are we being punished?

This incident led me to begin thinking about the way that so many students at M-CHS disrespect the school,  both as an institution as a physical place. It’s been going on for a long time, ever since I can remember.

No one likes M-CHS. We all complain about the poor state of the building, the failure of the sports teams, the lack of money. I’m guilty of it too.

But is it really right for us to be doing this? Our high school is a public institution established and paid for by our country and ourselves, through the proxy of taxes, and the only purpose it serves is to serve us as students.

Students joke all the time about how they’re never going to get anywhere in life because they have been stuck at M-CHS, but if it becomes true for them, it’s certainly not the school’s fault. Sure, it might be easier for students to get into college if they all had personal tutors to coach them through everything, but that’s just not going to happen for the majority of us.

No, if anyone fails, it is almost always his own fault. No one can do anything without committing himself to the task at hand, and at M-CHS it seems that there are a lot of students who are lacking the commitment to succeeding in high school.

They say that they’ll try harder once they get a good teacher, or once they’re in a classroom with new desks and a SmartBoard, but those things won’t have any effect. Students will just come up with new excuses for their own laziness.

Besides, those helpful little extras are never going to come to a school full of malcontents. Why would teachers want to teach students who are actively rebellious and show no interest in learning? Why would the State of Colorado pay extra to give lazy kids advantages that won’t be used?

Of course there are some excellent teachers who do make sacrifices and teach at M-CHS, and those students who actually utilize them are universally grateful.

But Superman’s not going to swoop in and save the day for the rest. In the real world, there is no Superman. Everyone is going to have to make their own way, because going on welfare is not a permanent option for any self-respecting, productive member of society.

If you want to make something of yourself, you’re going to have to do it yourself. So pay attention in class. Do what your teacher tells you. Seek out opportunities for academic enrichment. Start preparing yourself for the next steps after high school. No one can make you do it but yourself.