A lot of people asked us why being a teenager in Greece it’s different from the rest of the Europe and we decided to do a post about it, so we can give you further information.
Financial Crisis. Greece is one of the countries who struggle hard with economics. You can see it everywhere here. It affects our everyday lives in every possible way. One of the ways it affects the lives of teenagers is that we can’t follow a job we like (like arts or something with less profit), because our parents are too afraid that we will be unemployed. And being unemployed here means, that you will stay unemployed for a lot of years possibly. Unemployement is a huge problem for young people.
School. Oh boy. School in Greece is a pain in the ass. First of all to get in the university we have to pass some really hard exams (Panhellenics) on the end of our Senior year. Some students are reading for those exams for two (!) whole years because the amount of the stuff you have to read to pass, is HUGE. So basically for one (or two) years you have to study, all day, everyday without a break. Until the end of the Senior year you get crazy.
Our educational system is one of the worst, on the world probably. Everything we study is 10 times harder than what other European students study (especially Maths), most of our teachers are old (because they don’t hire young people, don’t ask me why) and bored and they don’t really care about us (they just want to do their job and get paid). To survive this shit-storm a lot of students need help from special classes after school but outside of school. Those special classes are called Φροντηστήρια (in free translation: tutorials) Most of people outside of Greece can’t really understand this because it only happens here, but those classes are tend to become more important than school. I don’t know how to explain this properly but they are a waist of time and money, a lot of money. ‘’Tutorials’’ are one of the basic profits of our country, so this is why ‘’Panhellenics’’ are so hard. To pass them you have to go in ‘’tutorials’’ so you pay a lot, and almost every student does that. It keeps working like that. It’s kind of cruel, for us.
Politics. Politics are a little out of control in Greece. Currently a neo-nazi Political-Party is on the Parliament and it slowly gets more and more supporters (they focus especially on young people, so it’s really sad to see the youth of our country supporting neo-nazis). They might (hopefully not) end up on the government sooner or later, and this is going to be really bad for everyone. They promote hate and racism and they are responsible for a lot of illegal stuff and also sadly some murders.
Social issues. Racism is very present in our lives. In all of its forms such as sexism and homophobia. (Especially homophobia. Greek!Even and Greek!Isak wouldn’t even think about kiss or hold hands, in the corridors of the school). So bullying is not something unusual in our schools and in general there’s a lot of hate and anger amongst us. Probably because the Orthodox Church has huge power over things, we are still very retrograde in things like homosexuality. In general, we have a lot of social issues European people don’t even think about, and they affect our everyday life.
Culture. A lot of people believe that Greece is a huge part of the Western world but the truth is that ancient Greece is a huge part of the Western world. We mixed with lots of other nations in between. We are in Europe but we are not a ‘’Western’’ country (we have a lot of progress to do so we can achive that) but still we have European characteristics so we are not an ‘’Eastern’’ country either. We are in between. Have in mind that the majority of Greeks are Orthodoxs, so we also have different customs from the rest of the Europe who are Catholics.
Progress. We can’t lie, living in Greece is not as progressive as living in Germany, or Sweden for example. Some people think we are savages or medieval but we actually made progress in the last 20 years but still it’s not enough. We have a long way to go, so we can be ‘’progressive’’ too. First of all we have to be more accepting, open-minded and leave the stereotypes behind. Fortunately a part of the younger generation are more open-minded than the older ones.
Those are some examples (Greek fellows, feel free to add stuff!). In general living in Greece it’s not like living in other European countries. It’s more ‘’intense’’ in a good and in a bad way.
And this is why we want a Greek Skam so badly. We want to share our problems and issues, we want to embrace our lifestyle and culture. We want to share our stories. But we mostly want to shake things up, and make a change!
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