There are many different stages in high school. Freshman year you are the new kid on the block. It’s like when you walk through the door of school there is a big target on you, you never could hide the fact that you were new. You were the little tiny kid in that awkward middle school stage with braces, crazy hair, unfinished eyebrows, no makeup on and a face covered in pimples. Then at some point during freshman year you realized you are still being treated like a little kid, and you do not like it. To avoid getting treated like a kid you buy a whole new wardrobe, start putting on makeup, and you start walking like you belong there. You act out a little, you speak out against other kids trying to show you that you are important in every situation that goes on. Then school ends, and it’s summer, your shorts get shorter, your tops get smaller, your boobs are more visible, etc.

Now, it is sophomore year, and you act like you run the school, even though when you pass the upperclassmen you go back to being sweet and innocent. Not much changes during sophomore year because you did it all already, and you think you’re the best you can be. The only thing that happens really in sophomore year is you start preparing for what you’re expecting junior year to be like. You go through the motions of taking an SAT/ACT, you look at a book or two about it. You start thinking about colleges, and every college you could think of you have some sort of plan and think it will be a piece of cake to get into. You realize that it is not as hard as it seems and that it won’t be that stressful because you’ve been preparing yourself.

Then, the next thing you know, you turn around and it is junior year and you realize you were totally wrong about it not being stressful. You’re being pressured to get a job, look at fifty different colleges and filling out every contact card possible for every single school. Your email starts to get jammed up from every single college that is trying to persuade you to apply. You’re forced to sit in a room for hours to take the SATS/ACTS. You also have to play a sport and get a great GPA. Junior year is all about work, school, and sports. Make this better

Then, finally after the most stressful time of your life it becomes senior year, you run that school, and you do not let anyone forget it. You spend the first couple weeks, applying to schools and getting the essays all done. Then, once they are all submitted and you get that first acceptance letter from one college, you feel so relieved you start acting like school is a hangout place for you now. You start to skip class to get food at the cafe or visit teachers because you think you’re better than everyone. Then before you know it, it’s graduation day. As soon as you hear that “Class of ____ is dismissed” and you throw up your caps, your last four years rush through your head.

It was June 25, 2015, when I graduated and ironically my eighteenth birthday, literally becoming an adult. I could not tell you a majority of my high school speeches at the graduation ceremony, except for a couple lines from each here and there. The most important one I think was the one about the bicycle metaphor. It went something along the lines of, “Life is like riding a bicycle, when you first learn how to ride it you have training wheels on. You might fall a couple times with the training wheels on but you get right back up without even thinking and try it again. Then when you get a little older and braver you take those training wheels off, and it’s not so easy to ride anymore but that does not stop you from riding it. You fall a couple times when you first are trying to ride it without the training wheels, but you do not give up, you hop right back up like nothing happened and get right back on and try again. Even when you get the hang of it and you haven’t fallen in years, you fall again but that still does not stop you, you get right back up as you did before, get back on and keep going.” That really stood out to me the most because it’s so true.

After hearing that I started to reflect upon my last four years of my life. I realized that I have learned major lessons that will forever stay with me. Throughout high school I struggled with many things mostly because I was majorly self conscious, and I thought I did not fit in because I was not in the popular groups. The biggest thing out of it all was that I feared that my ADHD was affecting my grades, that it was affecting my chances of getting into college. Unfortunately, I had a few bad relationships in high school, and it of course affected me - but what bad relationship does not affect you? I learned that in life your heart is going to be broken a couple times before I really find the one, but that is life. The most important thing I learned, though, was that I did not have to be accepted by everyone, and that it was okay to be different than others. I realized I did not have to be part of the popular cliques because in a few years, it will not matter if I was popular in high school or not.

As I visited maybe twenty five different colleges, I realized that every single one was different. Before going on the tours I thought all colleges were the same, the only thing that was different was the type of campus. Luckily, I was completely wrong because I feared of going through those feelings I felt in high school again. The same type of cliques and popular groups that I had to force myself into. On each tour I went on I realized that not one of any of the tour guides had the same high school experience to college experience story. When they told stories, the only thing that all of them said was that they were different from who they were in high school. As I thought about that, I noticed that high school was also about finding yourself. I understood now that finding myself did not mean finding what label I fit under in high school because high school is tough, and it makes being a teenager difficult. That time of your life is suppose to be cruel so that you can grow up and be yourself.

I realized that being different is okay because high school was just a stepping stone into life. To reach that step out of high school you have to realize that you do not have to be like everyone else, you are supposed to stand out. You are going to want to walk into a building and have that target right on you again like you did in freshman year. Being different, being seen, making it brighter when you walk into a room is how life is supposed to be. You are supposed to learn that you are making your own choices, you cannot cling onto other people and make decisions as a group because in life, it's only about your decisions that define YOUR future. High school taught me to break out of my shell and to be the light in a room full of darkness. To be someone who wore white when everyone else wore black.

I also thought about my college acceptances, me someone with not a typical SAT score, not a very good ACT, an average GPA, three seasons of something involved with sports and volunteer hours I got accepted to nine out of ten colleges. But then it hit me, when applying to colleges you do have to be different. You cannot have the same grades, hobbies and activities to get into the college, you can have similar things, but you HAVE to be different. I realized that being different is how you get seen in the world, how you get into college, how you get a job, how you make your mark in the world. I think that is when I realized that it was okay for me to be different because being different allowed me to accomplish something I never thought I would ever be able to. I never thought it was physically possible for me to be accepted to 90% of the colleges that I applied to. I smiled so big thinking about it, and then my mind went back to my graduation ceremony as I heard “Julianna Kadian” and walked across that stage and smiled and held up that diploma relieved. I had hit that step, and I was finally ready to get out into that world.