Ah, high school. The glory days filled with Friday night lights, proms, homecoming dances, and everything in between. At least, that’s how it goes for some people. For me, it was a nightmare. Every day was the absolute worst and I spent four years being told that “it gets better next year.” Guess what? Next year was never better. High school was a time of teenage angst and overall unhappiness. For some people, it is the best days of their lives. I feel bad for those people.

I spent four years jealous of the girls who loved high school. For four years, I envied and resented the girls who were far more pretty and popular than I, and forgot about what really mattered. I strove to be more likeable in the superficial sense while forgetting who I really was and who I really wanted to be. I dove headfirst into trying to be someone I was clearly not, which made me severely unhappy in a school, which I once called home.

I was certain that transferring high schools was the answer. However, I found the move more difficult than expected, and it turned out that even transferring didn’t solve all of my problems. I was still the same insecure teenage girl that I had been before transferring. What I can be grateful for is the smaller environment at my new school, which further fostered individual development. However, transferring schools did not solve the issues that I transferred hoping to solve.

The sad truth is that for some, high school never gets better. All four years are total and complete hell and it is all you can do to simply endure. There is a light at the end of the dark tunnel, though. I know those of you who hate high school are really sick of hearing that it gets better, but it truly does. When you get to college, you are in for the ride of your life.

There are many types of people in this world, but if you were to simplify it down to just two, there are those who love high school, and those who hate it. The ones who love high school are a whole lot more likely to hate college and miss high school and the ones who hated high school are very likely to love college. When you are in high school and you hate it and see others around you happy, it feels like the end of the world because you are certain at that time there is something wrong with you. There isn’t. You find out in college that a lot of kids hated it as much as you did.

Teenagers feel so pressured to love high school because of the media showing high school, portraying the years as the “glory days” when in reality, for a lot of kids, it’s the worst days of their life. Teenagers are made to feel as if there is something wrong with them for not being happy in high school. In all actuality, it is totally normal to be unhappy.

It is absolutely acceptable to hate high school. You are not alone. You will not be the first one to hate it and you won’t be the last. Just remember that college holds better things. Your future is bright, just hold on.