A letter to my high school sisters:
When you attend a private high school, there is a bond between students that cannot be found anywhere else. It’s a sense of community, of a deep love and appreciation of one another. There is an undeniable pride in the heart and souls of those at private schools, especially all-girl schools. You never fail to wear your class ring. You never neglect to share memories of time spent in knee-socks and polo-shirts. You, as a school, probably single-handedly keep Sperry in business. But what nobody tells you is that you will sometimes take the long way home from work if it means passing by your Alma Mater.
Not a day goes by where I don’t think of the girls I graduated high school with. Not a day goes by I don’t look down at my school ring and smile. I am filled by a type of devotion and appreciation I didn’t fully understand until I attended a college where a student ID suffices as a means of identification.
This is the briefest thank you, to the girls who set my expectations for high school at a supreme level. This is less than 500 words of thanks, words of hope and appreciation for your futures. These are 13 things every previous Catholic School Student has thought. These are things to give you a laugh if life is treating you poorly.
- Tuition is $10,000 a year. Turn the frickin heat on before we all get frostbite.
- I have not sold my fundraiser tickets. I will never sell my fundraiser tickets. Don’t try to bribe me with donuts and boys… I’ll still eat the donuts, but you will never see my ticket money.
- Religion class is not theology. It’s an excuse to curl into the fetal position on the floor in the Chapel and sleep. Meditation = life.
- Nobody is listening to the five minute long morning prayer. Nobody is awake yet.
- Using a cowbell to signal the change of periods is hardcore ghetto and I secretly loved every moment of it.
- Senior year, I still accidentally took the back staircase to the second floor… and walked right into the nursing home. My bad.
- I often shut the door on people when I knew they didn’t have their fob. I laughed to myself. Meditation + Fob = life
- The personal chef is my favorite faculty member.
- Having the dogs of faculty members roam the hallways was the best idea ever… why did they get rid of it?
- The updates in the library mean nothing if we can’t even sneeze without getting kicked out.
- It is not normal to walk around half-naked and eat an entire cake by ten in the morning. But girls do it anyway. And it’s considered okay.
- People only go up to the third floor bathroom for one reason… we all know what that is. You needed to poop.
- I wore black socks. Two days in a row. Nobody caught me.
It’s been two years, and I hope you’re all enjoying and embracing life. I hope you’re experiencing the world and it’s treating you kindly. I hope you haven’t let yourself become a number, a statistic in a society obsessed with generalization.
I hope you are being challenged.
