Exceptional
If you want to be a doctor,
You better know every bone in the body.
If you want to be an engineer,
You better get an internship, or else you’ll be sorry.
If you want to be a writer,
You better be successfully published before you’re eighteen.
If you want to be an entrepreneur,
You better make five non profits that they’ve never seen!
Exceptional!
They expect us to be exceptional.
Exceptional!
They expect us to be exceptional.
They don’t see,
That we try,
But we’re children who wish to survive.
Exceptional,
How can we be exceptional?
If you want to go to college,
You better be certain of your major.
And if you choose something off of the beaten path,
You’ll be mocked because of the danger.
If you want to feel accomplished at all,
Then you have to get perfect test scores every time.
But for anyone to make it anywhere,
We must sell our souls to a nine to five!
Exceptional!
They expect us to be exceptional.
Exceptional!
They expect us to be exceptional.
They don’t see,
That we try,
But we’re children who wish to survive.
Exceptional,
Do we have to be exceptional?
Life expectancy’s past seventy-five.
We haven’t even lived a quarter of our lives,
And out of less than a quarter, half of those years,
Were spent as a toddler using crocodile tears.
And if we live to seventy-five,
Our undeveloped brains decide the rest of our life.
Take the best classes, vie for a top school,
Survive in a system designed to be cruel.
Exceptional!
They expect us to be exceptional.
Exceptional!
They expect us to be exceptional.
They don’t see,
That we’ve tried,
But we’re children who’ve mentally died.
Exceptional,
We’re tired of exceptional.
Why must the advice that you see online,
Tell you what to do, destroy your peace of mind.
You’re still discovering, but now you’re behind
Regret is a weapon once it’s used right.
Even if you don’t take the SAT,
You won’t understand what it’s like to be free.
College essays and jobs, desires and sobs,
Are the way to fulfill those inserted dreams.
If you want to be a child,
Then this is not the world for you.
Copyright © Rita Burns | Year Posted 2026
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