Dear current high school students,
This isn't a nostalgic letter like I thought it was going to be.
By the time anyone reads this, I'll have walked across a stage and accepted a diploma that was the epitome of my high school years. I used to get anxiety about this exact moment. It took four years for me to turn that into excitement.
I stepped into school a bright-eyed 14-year-old whose heart was so big it made up about half of my weight. I had a love for learning and I still do. Movies and television series had sent me in with expectations of wild parties, cute boys, and classes that I would be able to breeze through. If there is only one piece of advice from this that you truly hold onto: expect nothing from high school or the people in it. Your experience is unique and incomparable to what anyone put up on a screen.
Be prepared for waves of transformation. For some reason I was expecting it to hit me all at once -- I was wrong. I was also optimistic in the hopes that it would also all be positive. Once again, incorrect. What this taught me, though, is that the universe has a way of making up anything that happens to you, good and bad.
These are not going to be the people that you spend the rest of your life with. You are not meant to get along with everyone. Your friend group with continue to become smaller and smaller and time goes by, and that is OK because those are the people that are meant to stay. Listen to your friends; they have your best interest at heart.
Pay attention to those that take your feelings into consideration when they make decisions. Those are the ones that you want to stick around.
Do not spend nights awake going over and over something in your head unless it is good. You could be sleeping. There is nothing I regret more than losing sleep over things that don't even matter to me anymore. Yes, I know everyone has told you this, and yes, it is absolutely true when people say that it won't matter in a year.
There are going to be moments when you think that you're not going to be able to survive. Sometimes, even worse things happen: you survive. Accept the challenge of moving on from a situation and hold your head up high while you do.
Don't sweat the small stuff. You'll fail a test... I failed a few. I also came to school late, and sometimes I didn't come to school at all. In the end, it really didn't matter.
Be heartfelt. Apologize when you know that you're supposed to. Never be too prideful to acknowledge when you've done something wrong. Tell the truth. Use your honesty. Use your conscious. Use your gut; it's almost always right.
There is so much beauty in kindness, and it is something that no one can take away from you.
Write everything down. You will want to remember laughing at three AM on your best friend's kitchen floor and the way it felt to watch the sun set while you drove your friends home while blasting music.
There are going to be many "last times." I urge you to embrace every single situation that you realize will be one of those times and enjoy it. There are going to be quite a few things you cannot wait to be rid of when you leave, but those memories will not be one of them.
Lastly, appreciate where you are right now, in this moment, because it is a fleeting one.
Sincerely,
A former high school student
