At the assembly every freshman has to attend before school starts the first thing the teachers tell you is that high school is challenging but rewarding. They tell you that these are the best years of your life and they go by so fast you should make sure to enjoy them. I choose to believe, however, that my best days are still ahead of me
High school is many things: awkward, dramatic, scary, fun, good, bad, boring, exciting and everything in between. However, it is nowhere near the peak of our young lives.
It is easy to confuse what happens during these four years as the best years of one’s life. When an A on an English paper can make your day and your largest worry is making plans for Friday night, life doesn’t seem so hard. However, there are also many reasons why these years are nowhere near the crème de la crème of life.
For one thing, high school is a building exploding with insecure teenagers trying to figure out where they belong. We take classes and make friends believing that one day we’ll wake up and realize who we are. It’s a lose-lose situation, really.
If you blend in with the crowd and be everybody but yourself, you’re not happy. There’s always a part of you that wishes you could wear those jeans that everybody hates or listen to that music that’s not popular which you can rock out to any day.
However, if you take the other route and go against the norm, you’re faced with curious stares, and whispers follow you down the hall. Teenagers do a very bad job of keeping their opinions to themselves.
Truth is, everyone judges and everyone lies and everyone at some point in their life feels the desperate need to fit in. This is where peer pressure comes from. So on top of spanish tests and math quizzes we also have the burden of finding ourselves and determining what we want from life.
As a teenager, friends are a necessity. A world without friends would be like a world without "Jersey Shore" and "Glee": unfathomable. Friends are great. They provide support and entertainment, and real ones can stay with you forever.
However, with friends comes the dreaded drama. Plenty of conversations end in fights and you find yourself spending many a school day avoiding the people who thrive on it.
Relationships, with all of their good, come plenty of bad. Drama in unavoidable, and, especially in these teenage years, we spend unnecessary days crying, yelling, fighting and moping. It is another weight put on your shoulders to carry around the halls.
These four years are supposed to go by fast, but the workload makes it seem so much longer. Tests, quizzes and study guides galore have become weekly experiences for the average high school student.
Then, of course, comes junior year. Not only so you have the average challenging, insecure, drama-filled life of adventure but also the lovely, never welcomed question "What are you doing for college?"
Some of us are sure about what we want to do and where we want to go but for those of us who don’t, we’re freaked out. It’s like no one told us you had to pick out your future in third grade and if you didn’t you’re out of luck.
Of course, this is an enormous hyperbole. In time, we will all know where to go and what to do. However, after the 7th billionth time, this questions takes over our minds. It consumes us and all of a sudden graduation doesn’t seem as bittersweet as it does terrifying.
In actuality the best days are post-graduation. The moment that diploma’s in your hands is the moment your life begins. You venture out of the bubble that is Libertyville and out into the world. With ice cream for breakfast and co-ed dorms, the scarce pleasures of high school will be a vague, distant memory.
After college you get the chance to live out your dreams, whether they’re settling down with a family, beginning the career of a lifetime or traveling all over the world. We become the parents and authority figures we so often rebelled against. We get the power to do what we want when we want.
Sure, there’s responsibilities, but there’s also real life. We get to experience the greatest life has to offer and hopefully not get the chance to look back on the years that once seemed incredible. Nostalgia is poison. To grow up and be happy is the ultimate American dream.
The point is, life gets better. Things change and everybody has their ups and downs, but in the end, we as adolescents have no idea what the best days are.
Peaking in high school is a cliché.
Adults say, "Enjoy these times now because you never get them back." This sounds bad, but actually, it’s nothing but great. I wouldn’t trade this time of my life for anything, but I can’t wait to move forward and see what comes next.
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