We are knee-deep in high school graduation season, which always leaves me steeped in memories of my own sordid youth as a high school senior, fondly looking back upon four years of memories...
Oh wait, no I don't, because high school was the worst.
When I started high school - six long years ago - everyone gave me a knowing smile and said "high school will be the best four years of your life." I sure hope not. That's pretty early to have the best four years of your life, and it sets the bar low for the next 70 or so years.
While there were some good parts about high school, like living close to all my best friends and seeing them every day during the school year and the summer, there were a whole lot more not-so-good parts about it. For every hour I spent enjoying my time in my late teens, there were about 40 hours of pain to make up for it.
Part of this may be the context in which I went to school: picture 2,000 people crammed into a building made for 1,000. Add backpacks, crutches, lockers and the obligatory makeout stops. There you have it: my high school. It's not helped by the horrendous parking situation, either. Every morning and every afternoon, students fought each other to get out of the parking lot and turn left onto a busy road without a traffic light and generally without anyone directing traffic. It was the cherry on top of both the mornings and the afternoons.
More than that, though, it was the weight of the future that seemed even more dire in high school than in college. Teachers, guidance counselors and pretty much every other adult put weight on every second of every day. Getting a C on a paper meant you weren't getting into college, which basically meant you had no worth and nothing to offer the world. This is 100 percent not true for several reasons, but at 17, it felt painfully immediate. There's not enough time in the world to do all the things teenagers are expected to do, and this idea is deep-set among the collective subconscious of American high schools.
Though I had many good friends in high school, I have grown apart from some. They are the only part of high school I miss - spending afternoons driving down the back roads of our county, watching movies in friends' basements with snacks our parents bought, chit-chatting in the grass outside school - but sadly, moving on and growing apart is inevitable. I hope each one of them finds the success we always talked about over lunches in the senior courtyard, which we sat in stubbornly despite the cold, spiders, bees and freshmen who kept invading our space. We always said we'd be there for each other, but I suppose this is a sense of naïveté. All the friends you make at 16 will not be friends for life, but hopefully some of them will be.
High school seniors, be happy. High school is over, and you're never going back. Graduation is a momentous occasion and was certainly the happiest time of my life as a high schooler, even though they ran out of diploma covers by the time they got to "W" and the graduation picture of me walking across the stage looks more confused and angry than happy. It's a hallmark. It means you did something excellently, stupendously and wonderfully right: you survived four enormously difficult years. What follows will be difficult too - college is hard, so is real life - but you have more say over what happens, who you become.
High school freshmen, look for the silver linings. Keep them in a notebook for when the sun seems gone. Take it from someone who counted the days since I walked in the doors for the first time: this is only temporary. Nothing is as dire as it seems.
Above all, remember this: you're going to be just fine.
