Hey there, youths. I hope things are… lit? I’m sorry I even tried. Crazy how even just a year of age difference seems to really highlight the generational gap between you and I. But I’m not here to try and relive my glory days. I’m here to make some attempt at helping you through yours.
I know how you’re feeling right now. Your English teachers are pressuring you to finish your application essays, your parents are at your throats about colleges and scholarships, and you’re having weekly mental breaks about where your life is going. As the year draws closer to the mid-point, you’re going to start noticing a fundamental change in everyone around you. A looming sense of pessimism and angst is going to become omnipresent.
The second half of senior year very quickly starts to feel like a competition to see who cares the least. Who hates this town the most? Who goes to class the least? Who hates everyone else the most? Whose grades have dropped the most since hearing back from colleges? Suddenly, these things are going to seem important.
Someone please let me know why on earth these are questions we strive to be the answer to. Why do we want to be the saddest person in the school? Is there a scholarship available for that? Nope. So here is my advice to you:
The end of senior year is your chance to stop caring, but not about your grades or your friends. Senior year presents an opportunity like no other: stop caring what other people think. You will never see 90% of the people in your graduating class again after graduation. Be nothing more or less than exactly who you are. Talk to the boy you’ve been dreaming of talking to. Confront that girl that made your life hell freshman year. Tell your friends how important to you they’ve been. Tell your favorite teacher how they changed your life.
Yes, things are going to suck. Juniors are going to steal your parking spots. Teachers are going to continue to pile on the work despite you already being accepted to your top school. Freshmen are going to scream in the hallway at 8 a.m. You’re going to start getting sick of the people you’ve spent the last four years with. These things are inevitable. What is not inevitable is the way you deal with these things.
Do not spend the last months of high school in misery. Go to prom. Go to senior events. Buy a yearbook. Make everyone you know sign it. Listen to what your teachers have to say. They have been where you are. When graduation FINALLY comes, listen to the speeches your classmates make. Let them touch your heart. Let yourself realize how very high-school-musical things are. You are all in this together. Do not regret how you spent the end of your time with these people.
Do not allow yourself to get caught up in the competition to be dejected. Not feeling is not trendy, and being angry is not an “aesthetic”. Maybe this is triggered by a need to numb ourselves from the pressure and anxiety that comes along with entering adulthood. But in the words of Panic! At the Disco, “being blue is better than being over it”. It’s time we stopped avoiding emotions and started feeling them. Let them change you and make you stronger.
If nothing else, remember this: Graduation is not the end. Keeping in touch with your friends throughout college is possible. You don’t have to have a 20-year-plan by the end of senior year. You still have time. All you have to do is care.
Some things are going to suck, but senior year doesn’t have to.
