This post is all advice for anyone feeling negative/depressed (it's that time of the year again...).

If you're reading this, you know what it's like to:

• Deal with a completely unreasonable teacher
• Deal with jerks who purposely treat you bad
• Be the topic of jealous people talking and victimizing about you behind your back
• Have to grind through meaningless work that take away from your passion
• Have to satisfy others' expectations and change who you are
• Have to care about what other people think

Here's what got me over this hump.

I realized the simple fact that everything around you - teachers, jerks, the system - will change in college. And everything around you in college will change as you go to grad school. And everything around you in grad school will change when you enter your first job. And again when you switch job. And again and again and again.

What doesn't change? YOU

As we're all logical people - think about yourself in terms of value and status. Your value is determined based on your technical skills and social skills, both of which are tangible things that you can get better at. That's why we're all on AoPS - to get better at problem solving, a skill that'll stick for a life time. It's easy to let less important factors - i.e. a number out of 150, a number out of 15, a number out of 42, a number out of 4.0, a number out of 1600, etc. etc. - get in the way. The skills is real and in no way can it ever be measured with a number, and it's easy for it to get obscured by these factors and start blaming yourself for factors you can't control! This is also the recipe for depression so stop worrying about these things and focus on elevating your value.

It saddens me as a society that the more successful you are, the more you're criticized, victimized, and pointed fingers at. When others gossip about how you're arrogant and esoteric, it's not that they truly believe you to be of less value - it's because in saying that to others and getting sympathy, they can elevate their status a bit and pull down yours by a bit. This is also grossly inefficient - you would have to go around everyone and talk bad about that one person just to drag him down by a bit, and most importantly, none of this matters when you go on to college! And guess what, the time you spend dragging others down can be the time you spend elevating yourself!

So as opposed to worrying about what others think, focus on making yourself valuable by practicing problem solving, developing your passion, etc., skills that'll be important. Of course, maintain the friendships you have - esp. those who accept you for who you are - as they're the ones who provide you the environment to get better.

An analogy is this - if your goal in life is getting girls to like you - it's FAR less efficient, to go around dealing with them one at a time and try to get each to like you, than to focus on improving your attractiveness by working out, getting more fit, becoming more fashionable, getting good at something cool (i.e. sports). That way, you become more magnetized and girls start coming to you - although this will take longer, it's far better for you in the long run.

Really, everything just clicked for me when I realized I was being stupid for getting mad at things I can't control, esp. trying to win over people's opinions of me. The only real thing to me is the time I spent doing what I love in the ungodliest hours of night (doing math) - and if someone has a problem with that, it's not what I can control. The only thing I can control is, what can I do right now to get myself closer to who I want to be?

I learned this from my role model, Kobe Bryant - which he calls the black mamba mentality.

Oh, and if you're really having trouble with jerks (students, teachers, whoever) at school, watch this.

Really, when anything negative begins to bother me, I just plug in my earphones, listen to some Kpop, and laugh.

At the very least, it's quite enlightening and insightful to see how stupid the education system is. Take it as a learning opportunity, and take in as much observations as you can. Stop focusing on the grades, the scores, others - focus on doing it for yourself and learning for yourself.

After all, you ought to enjoy anything negative - without negativity, you'll never have a chance to get better. Think of it as a wall - annoying, right? since it limits where you can go - but, hey, turn around and it becomes something for you to push off on.

So enjoy the time of high school - it can be frustrating, but focus on being yourself, increasing your value for society, and enjoying this temporary distraction in the grand scheme of things - you'll never experience it again.

At least that's how I feel, and suddenly the 4 AM nights, the red bulls, the piles of work, the jerk teachers at school - everything just became a hell more enjoyable.