Dear High School Me,
If I can say anything to you, it’s to hold on. High school will have its ups and downs, but you will make it out alive. Actually, the time will feel like it’s dragging on but as you look back on it once you’re in college you will feel like it flew by. You will miss high school, believe it or not.
Freshman year you will learn who your real friends are. You’ll learn that unlike middle school, you have to actually study for your test. You’ll realize that the teachers aren’t there to hold your hand through everything and neither are your parents. Your fall Friday nights will be spent underneath the lights cheering on the football team, the marching band, and your best friend who’s a majorette of course. You’ll experience your first Homecoming dance (and you’ll hate every minute of it). You won’t dress up on the themed days during Homecoming week or Red Ribbon week because you don’t want people to think that you’re weird. You will get your first (and only) C of your high school career. You’ll look up to the graduating Seniors in envy and count down the semesters you have left until you are in their place.
Sophomore year you’ll take your first AP classes, and they will be hell. You’ll spend countless hours studying (and crying) because you just can’t seem to pass a test and the teacher is awful. But like I said earlier, hold on. You’ll make it out alive (and with an A, even if you don’t pass the AP exam). You will turn fifteen and get your permit and think you’re so cool chauffeuring your parents around. You will “fall in love” and swear you’ve found the one you will marry one day. Newsflash: that’s not your future husband. He will break your heart over and over and over again. Eventually, you’ll be okay again, though. You’re better off without him, I promise. And the future holds a guy that treats you like a Princess, just wait. You’ll go to your second homecoming dance, and you will have more fun than Freshman year, but it still won’t be the time of your life (Oh did I mention, you’ll be in a cast and on crutches at the dance. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t that great.) You’ll spend about twelve weeks on crutches praying as you maneuver through the hallways that the next doctor appointment they will take you out of the cast. You’ll spend the whole spring semester counting down the days until you’re an upperclassman. Please don’t wish your time away. It’s ticking by faster than you know it.
Junior year you’ll take even more AP classes, but this time you will be a little more prepared for them (you still won’t pass the exams, though, but it’s okay). You’ll skip out on some football games to study for tests. You will turn 16 and you’ll get your driver's license. You’ll drive everywhere but eventually, you’ll have to slow your roll because gas costs money, money that you don’t have. You’ll go to homecoming even though none of your friends are going and you’ll end up having the time of your life. You’ll fall in love with a new guy and he will make you think he’s interested and then cut you off multiple times. Once again, hold on. Don’t give up on him. You know you love him, and that one actually turns out pretty good. You’ll take the ACT for the first time and think that your life is over whenever you get your score back. You’ll skip out on having a social life for the rest of the year and study like crazy for the ACT and take it seven more times. Eventually, you get a pretty decent score. You’ll go to prom and you will be miserable at the dance itself, but before and after is great. You’ll start to embrace the dress up days and you and your friends will go all out. Have fun. Oh yeah, and it makes for great pictures.
After what feels like years of waiting, senior year will come. Your fall semester will be filled with AP homework, college and scholarship applications, football games, homecoming week and the dance, making new friends, sitting outside at lunch in the senior section and leaving during your hybrid class and going to get lunch with your friends three days a week dreading having to go back to school. Spring semester will quickly roll around and you will get accepted into your dream school and then after much prayer, you will receive scholarship after scholarship until finally, you get to go on a full-ride. You’ll cry. Your family will cry. You might skip prom (if you're like me it'll be because your baby brother will be born that night) and you won’t ever regret not going. Prom is overrated, anyways. However, the boy you fell in love with Junior year will fall in love with you too. You’ll have senior meeting after senior meeting and you will be annoyed to death with it — until the one where you get your cap and gown. Suddenly there are only three weeks left of your high school career and then you’re done. The last three weeks will be filled with senior events — memory day, the picnic, awards day, and then finally graduation. You’ll give your speech at graduation. You’ll sing the alma mater with the rest of your class. You’ll turn your tassel and then you will throw your cap, then the recession will play.
And then it’s all over. You’re left staring at the empty arena watching the event workers clean up. Everyone you’ve spent the last four years with is leaving with their families, and you know that is the last time you will see some of those people. You’re holding your diploma cover and wondering where the last four years went. Wondering why you didn’t enjoy high school just a little more. You’ll stand there thinking about what the future holds. About college. About leaving friends. And you will cry, but it’s okay.
As you walk out the doors ready to embrace whatever life throws your way and the changes you will face over the next several months, know that it is going to be okay. Just hold on. You will survive.
Today you finished your first semester of college, and guess what? You still think about high school. Your dorm is plastered with pictures of you and friends from homecoming week and dances and just random selfies taken in the hallway. And occasionally you find yourself looking at them and smiling as you walk out of your dorm with your new friends to make new memories.
Dear high school me, enjoy it. Slow down. Breathe. Relax. Embrace every second. Time goes by too fast. One day you will miss it, I promise.
Love,
College me
