It's been two years since I graduated from high school, and I am proud to admit I have no emotional or physical attachments to my high school. I do not attend any football, basketball games or any other school functions related to my old high school. I don't even still speak to my old high school "friends" anymore, which might come as a shock to most of you who are about to graduate or might have graduated last year and are still in touch with your high school acquaintances. But when I moved away to college, all of my friendships from high school began to fade faster than I ever thought.
After high school, you leave your hometown, "friends," memories and whatnot and meet new people, learn new things. You figure out what you want to be, who you are and what really matters to you.
High school is nothing more than just practice for the real world. High school has not taught me how to balance a checkbook, pay rent, fix things or build lasting, lifelong connections. It didn't teach me anything that will propel me forward in the real world after high school. When you leave, you find your real friends — whether it be in college, the military or anywhere else you choose to go in life. Sure, high school has taught me many "important" things like how to find the square root of X and balance chemical equations (not really), but within those four years of high school I learned that it really isn't a place to teach you about the real world and what matters in it.
High school is difficult in all aspects. It is definitely not easy to graduate. Therefore, going into the real world, you become an adult and want to leave childish things behind — even things that you thought would matter. When applying for jobs, companies don't ask what your high school GPA was, if you were "popular," if you were captain of the football team or scored the highest number of points in your high school basketball career. Because all of that? It simply does not matter once you leave.
When you graduate, you get to start fresh and become whoever you want to be. Who you were in high school does not determine who you can and will be in the future. Learning, to leave behind all of the components of high school opens you up for better things to come in your life. But if you're holding onto something from high school, whether it be an old high school crush/flame, your GPA, friends or even favorite teacher, you're not letting yourself see and realize the importance of living in the real world. Whether high school was the best time of your life or made you absolutely miserable, life afterward is what really matters and shapes you into who you are.
