What You Really Learn In High School

I graduated high school yesterday, and honestly, it wasn’t the most exciting thing ever. But that’s okay, because the graduation ceremony isn’t the most important thing. As cheesy as it sounds, it’s the memories, the lessons, and all the harsh truths I learned in high school, that I’ll carry with me.

T.V. shows portray high school as the most dramatic (but best!) four years of your life. They show a lot of fighting, hair pulling, parties, kissing, and more fighting. But what they rarely ever show is actual studying, the stress, the awkwardness, the feelings of insecurity.

My freshman and sophomore years, I cared too much about how people saw me. I cared about fitting in and being cool. I cared about my clothes and if my eyeliner wings were as good as the other girls. I even bragged about not caring in math and pretended it was okay that my grades weren’t perfect. I cared too much about things that didn’t matter, and not enough about the things that did matter. 

I wish I found out earlier that high school isn’t perfectly planned monologues, like Degrassi claimed it to be, or adventures where you cut school with your best friends. High school is where you figure out who you are, or who you want to be. It’s a lot of things.

It’s messy. It’s tiring. It’s sleepless nights and boring classes. It’s stressing over getting the highest SAT score, finding the perfect college for you, and crying over not knowing what you want to do in life. But it’s also hand holding to class, and laughing uncontrollably on field trips. It’s midnight drives in beat up hand-me-down cars and sharing secrets until 4 am. It’s awkwardly searching for your friends at rallies and questioning why you decided to show up to a random volleyball game. It’s opening acceptance letters and feeling on top of the world. It’s pretty prom dresses and sweaty dances. It’s a bunch of firsts, and a bunch of lasts. It’s reflecting on the past and laughing at all the times you were scared to become the person you are now. It’s meeting people who you know will make an impact on your life. It’s a billion feelings all at once.

High school is what you make of it, I’ve concluded. You’re given four years to figure out who you are, what you want, and who you will become.

How you spend it, is all that matters.

Congratulations class of 2016, we did it! Cheers to bigger and better adventures, lessons, and experiences!

Xoxo,

Eliz

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