Growing up in a small town isn't always the easiest. Most weekends consist of staying at home or going to a town that is slightly bigger than yours. If you have lived in this town most or all of your life, you begin to despise it. Nothing to do and barely anything to see that you haven't before. School isn't easy when there is less than 300 students in your entire school. Your in 9th grade and all you can talk about is how you can't wait to graduate. You are sick of being the "fresh meat" and ready for a change. All of the grades above you don't ever want to invite you to anything but you still don't want to hang out with the 8th graders. You really start to miss life before high school.

Then 10th grade rolls around and your whole mindset changes. You love your classes and teachers, shockingly. You start to go to parties and feel "cool". You think "it can't get better than this". You get to be a part of your school's spirit train before home football games. You might not lead them, but you are just glad to be included. You care what you look like for Friday night lights, so you try not to be too spirited. Friday night lights are the highlight of your weekend. You usually wear makeup and fix your hair. If you are really brave, you decide to go up to one of the senior players and ask if you can take a picture with them. They say yes and life is good.

If you have any similar experiences to me, then you know what comes next. Eleventh grade year, also known as the worst year. Seriously guys can we start a petition to just skip this year? This year brought out the worst in me and gave me unimaginable stress. I thought, "will I make it to senior year? What if I drop out? Ninth grade wasn't this bad, please take me back." On the bright side, you have been driving for a little while so your parents trust you to go out of town by yourself. Trips to the movies (since there isn't a theater in your town), shopping sprees, or even see your out of town friends; make for a good weekend. Anything to get your mind off the 3 quizzes, 2 tests, and 2 papers due on Monday. I wondered many times if that was even legal.

Finally, the year we have all been waiting for. Senior year was only a figment of our imagination. Less work and more fun, and I am here for it. You do have to try up until Christmas, but after that it is seniority all the way. Every week there is some senior function or party. What is school anymore? You are so excited for college, you apply to 3 or 4 different ones just for fun. You are finally the Kings and Queens of school. The girls in your class finally got over all the clique business (sorta). You've all changed since that first day in 9th grade. You use to say how you weren't going to miss anybody. Then senior skip day comes, and you realize how wrong you were. These people aren't so bad after all, but why did we all argue for so long.

My point to all of this is yeah high school kind of sucks. High school musical for sure was off, but there are memories being made that you will look back on. Times when you wish you could go back. Personally, I am thankful for high school. It showed me who I want to be and who I definitely don't want to be. It was far from easy but it taught me a lot. Time flies and we can't change that. All we can do is enjoy what we have at the moment and don't rush it. Stop and smell the roses or daisies, if that's what you prefer.