Author Mike Rose recites his experiences with mediocrity in high school in his short story I Just Wanna Be Average. Rose explains a time in high school when he became content with being average. Surrounded by bad influences, he struggles to pull himself out of the mundane and into the extraordinary. With the help of a mentor, Rose begins excelling in school, creating a happier life for himself and ultimately starting the road to success he strides on today. Rose starts his story off recounting the morning bus ride. It is is a mixing pot for all types of individuals. As Rose observes his schoolmates, he gives a brief background of what types of people they are. A trend becomes apparent. Generally, the “coolest” and most popular people are the ones that get in the most trouble. By Rose’s analysis of the individuals on the bus, the kids that have more physical prowess and better looks than most are highly valued in the school community. His tone indicates that he is influenced to be like the cool kids, everyone wants to fit in, but fitting in means being average. Rose goes on to talk about his actual school experience. When he had entered high school at Our Lady of Mercy, his placement test scores got mixed up with the much lower scores of …show more content…
He soon falls victim to his environment. After his second year of high school, he is finally able to get out of vocational schooling and into the schooling he should’ve been enrolled in from the start. Rose finds this much more difficult than vocational school where much less was expected from him, he became used to doing as little work as he needed to. When his junior year comes around, Rose still is just floating by. His coping method is to, “reject the confusion and frustration by openly defining (himself) as the common Joe” (Rose, 187). While this mentality scraped Rose through vocational schooling, it is not a strategy for success in a more rigorous level of