My entire high school career was built on people telling me what I was going to miss. I didn’t go to prom, didn’t go to homecoming dances. I went to as few school functions as I had to. I hated high school. Because of this, everyone seemed to have this thought that they could use this time to thrust their opinions on me, to try and guilt me into feeling bad for the life I had cultivated. Everyone told me I would regret not going to prom because it was the biggest event of your high school career. Everyone told me I would miss the chance to be with friends once the homecoming dances were over. Everyone told me that high school would be the best four years of my life, and that come graduation, I would miss it all.
What people don’t seem to understand, is that everyone experiences things differently. What you saw as high school, I saw as hell, a time of my life where I dragged myself through school days. I counted down hours to when I wouldn’t have to be back. People will joke that I wasn’t there enough to really experience it—I skipped a lot of high school, never got the perfect attendance award.
Students shouldn't have to choose mental health over school.
Everyone would think that I was just overreacting—but those who say that are the ones who were popular, who were able to befriend teachers to the point that teachers adored them. Those are the ones who made life a living hell for those who hated it.
It was because of public school that I lost the self-confidence that I had early on. I was awkward, I went through days feeling gross, like no one liked me. I didn’t get the high school experience of parties with friends, boyfriends to hold hands with in the hallways. I was an outsider. Yet, I was also a Switzerland with students, a neutral when it came to who you liked or didn't liked. The human form of "meh". High school left me feeling like I had done something wrong.
No one should have to live like that.
It took me hardly more than a month to realize:
High school is nothing.
What you did in high school is not important the moment you leave that school and move on. No one will care if you went to prom, no one will care what your favorite class was in school. Friends won’t hate you because you don’t wear designer clothes every day.
The real world is waiting, and the real world is nothing like the petri dish that high school is.
I have never felt more alive once I left high school. I don’t miss it. I have never felt the need to go back, to relive the classrooms I had spent agonizing years in. Some of my teachers were great, they will live on as the teachers who taught me to love what I do—but I don’t miss the classes, the workload. I don’t miss the stress.
College will open your eyes to a way of life that you probably never expected. Professors won’t care what you do. If you miss a class, they won’t care, they won’t make you feel like the butt of a joke when you finally show up. They don’t want to be there as much as you. You will be doing what you want—you won’t have to sit through hours of math and science that you don’t understand. I’m spending my days writing. I’m not sitting around feeling stupid because I don’t understand made up numbers. I’m doing what I love every time I show up to spend two hours in a class.
Popularity isn’t important. No one will judge you if you wear the same shirt two days in a row. They’re probably wearing clothes they haven’t washed in a week.
Because the real world is nothing like high school. High school is a bubble, a bubble that festers disgusting viruses that attack self-confidence, that leave children hating themselves, and the ground they walk on.
The real world makes you hate yourself, but for good reasons.
Like, you have a job and now have to pay taxes. You hate yourself for the fact that you no longer have nights off because you have friends who want to hang out, a job to do.
But the best part of all—these are all choices.
I have yet to feel bad about prom. I have yet to feel bad about homecoming dances, pep rallies, parties, and weeks I skipped.
Because leaving high school was the best thing that ever happened to me.
I have never felt so good about myself as I do now.
I never want to go back.
