What You Learn in High School
High school is about learning, but not just book work. High school teaches you some of the most valuable life lessons that will linger with you forever.
As you start high school, at 14-15 years old, nothing phases you. You are young and have no care in the world. You have parents who take care of you. Once your sixteenth birthday sneaks up on you, you get your license and gain a lot of freedom. You learn that you don’t really know what to do with that freedom and soon you learn how great that freedom is. The years pass more and you start to get your first job and gain a little responsibility. You take your new responsibilities with pride as you feel like you've worked hard and earned these. You never noticed that these responsibilities have taught you how to be a good citizen, how to hold your own, and how to manage your time.
By the time junior year rolls around reality sets in as you take the test that lays your future out ahead of you. You focus all your stress on the ACT simply because it is terrifying knowing your future lays in the hands on this test. Then as ACT time pops up, your anxiety sets in and you grab your pencils and sit in a room dead silent for hours. Hours later, you realize it wasn't so bad. You then learn that worrying is stupid and you shouldn't fixate on it. You realize that everything will be okay and will work out just how it needs too. This could be the biggest lesson you will learn throughout high school. Let things fall into place, as they will for each and every one of us.
Throughout the four years you meet some of the best people you'll probably ever meet. The sad part is that most of the time you meet those people your senior year when you're about to say goodbye. Everyone you meet with leave a little impression of themselves on you. You will carry that little impression with you forever. Without even noticing it, you start to become the people you surround yourself with. Your character gets shaped by these people. Without thinking you start to become the person you will be for the rest of your life.
As senior year begins and the end seems to close yet so far away, you begin to focus on what is to come in your future. We tend to forget that we still have a whole year of high school left, to be young and carefree. We don't push ourselves to enjoy each and every last minute we have together because in 9 months you will be saying goodbyes to people who you've been with since kindergarden. You begin to realize that no matter how close you were to some of the people in your class, they still mattered to you and you will still miss them. We focus so much on college that we let our final high school moments pass by. You learn that you shouldn't have let those moments pass and you promise yourself not to do it in college because that is all that's left. When senior year comes to a close you start to notice all of the little things you will miss when you move on to the next chapter. Then, you notice that you took advantage of so many things. Whether it was the teachers who were always there to help or the $2 basketball games that soon become $200 basketball games. You realize that the little things in life are the things that make you happiest. Finally as the final day approaches you realize that saying goodbye is not easy and never will be. You prepare all year for saying goodbye to your favorite people but you soon realize that saying goodbye is the hardest thing to do. How do you walk away from the people who have been there for it all? What do you say? How do you say it? Then you learn that you simply can't say goodbye so you leave it at a see you later.
I'm going to leave you with this throughout your four years in high school, you will learn so many valuable lessons. However, as you finish your senior year I hope that you learn one very important one, you are the sun, nobody else. This means, make yourself happy because it's your universe and your happiness is the most important thing. When you are happy everyone else will follow.
