I Am Not You, You Are Not Me

I think I speak for many people when I say high school is a critical point in one’s life. Coming into high school, things seemed to be tightly-knitted between my peers and I; those of us who had just

My palms were sweating, my heart was racing, I had no idea what to expect or who I was going to meet. I was never the type of girl to embrace new situations, I hated change and I wasn’t very good with meeting new people. I figured once I got to high school it would be my chance to start all over, turn the page in my book of life, and flip over a new leaf. I wanted to finally be the girl that fit in with everyone. I had imagined myself going to parties with big groups of my new friends, having sleepovers and doing all of the things cool high school kids normally do. I was certain that my high school career would be just like one of those really corny teen movies and I would live happily ever after with the homecoming crown and the boy of my

The adolescent years are the hardest years lived by everyone. Hormones are raging out of control and thoughts of self doubt are present on your mind at every second. You spend majority of your time enclosed a facility with other teenagers all experiencing the same discomfort. That’s right: high school. HIgh school for me was the final stage in metamorphosis to adulthood. Beginning my my high school career in a brand new school with no familiar faces or friends was a first. For the first time, I was alone. I spent lunches and alone and had no one to work with. At first, it was all so terrifying, borderline embarrassing! But later, despite being by myself, I stopped feeling alone. My focus later stopped circulating around the fact that I was

Vividly, I can remember walking through the high school doors for the first time as a freshman with shaky legs and a nervous heartbeat. The school was a jungle of wide, shiny hallways filled with lumbering seniors who I thought were going to knock my books down on Freshman Friday. However, time has passed, and now I find myself to be the tall and “scary” senior. As I ponder about the last four years I have spent at Little Falls Community High School, I can not help but realize how much I have changed for the better. As I have matured, I have gleaned that beauty does not come through makeup and clothing brands, but rather through processing a good heart. Also, I have changed my career and college plans after high school, and I know that I will

High School culture has changed since the “old days.” Students from all grades are not only striving for academic success, but also participate in many extracurricular activities as outside forces continue to impact social life. With this comes the typical struggles of students figuring out who they are, and what kind of person they want to become as college becomes a daunting factor.

Entering high school from your nearby middle school, there’s going to be a handful of people. There’s going to be the ones you are confident you’re going to talk, laugh, and continue to make memories with, the ones you doubt you’ll ever speak to, and ones you have yet to ever meet. Something I learned quickly, is that there’s so many people and your connections with them change constantly and they can change you.

High school is such a different experience for everyone. We all take different paths and learn new things everyday. We learn trigonometry, how to fix cars, how to dissect a frog, and different laws in the world. The things we learn in class are very important, but along the way of expanding our educations, one will tend to learn a lot about themselves and others. For me, I feel that my high school experience was not ideal and I constantly complain about the outcome. Looking back in grade eight, I had a different plan for me. It took me up until this year to realize that although my experience was not something worth bragging about, I've learned a lot about who I am. I've learned to take chances, be patient, and

Walking into school on my first day of high school, I felt out of place. My face covered in acne, my teeth covered in braces, and the callicks in my hair stuck up through the abnormally thick layer of hair gel that coated them. My middle school social anxiety still ruled over me as I could barely speak with any member of the opposite sex. Yet, I still had an odd confidence about me. I had always been one of the best students in my class, even without ever studying for a test. I viewed high school as a slight uptick from the curriculum I had easily passed in middle school. I was wrong. High school exists as a microcosm of society, in which I originally failed to acclimate myself to the challenges posed to me in a setting of increased

The beginning of high school is the start to the next four years of hell. No one wants to be there. Everyone says, “these will be the best four years of your life!” Along with, “it goes by so fast,” and, “in the blink of an eye,” but the truth is, I don’t see it. Every waking moment I have to sit through a lecture in a cold, solid, chair is like sitting silently next to your parent in a car as they scold you for what you’ve done. You can’t go anywhere, or say anything. You just have to embrace it.

There is a certain potent quality to the transition between middle and high school; many make it through this transition. I apparently, wasn’t good enough for that transition, and I didn’t get in. I also didn’t even apply for the spot, so this not getting in thing made no sense to me on the first day. However, later on, I discovered that it mattered a lot more than I had first thought. Mostly because it basically sealed my fate for the rest of my life. Suffice to say, I am the single unluckiest person in this whole school. Unrivaled by anyone, I win the nonexistent title by a landslide every single year. And I absolutely hate it. But don’t be mistaken, it’s not that I don’t enjoy being alone, I absolutely do, it’s just that they constantly tease me for it like I actually care. And everyone should know by now that I don’t care. Aside from school, I really have no reason to unhappy. But that’s just it, I am always unhappy. And maybe that’s why the kids at school pick on me so much. Either way, life has dealt me a pretty pathetic deck of cards. And today is no different from any other day, it’s exactly the same. I wake up with a frown on my face, completely and perpetually uninterested in every little thing that I have to do that morning. I weave around my family, all bustling and happy, half-asleep and all smiles. And then I drive to school. A school surrounded by trees and fog. It was as gloomy as my mind was. And so I get out of my car. And then I go to class. And then the

For four long years I felt as if my high school was in a different world in of itself. I had spent that time interacting with an extensive amount of groups, or “cliques”, and getting to know what they do. Through my experiences, I had begun to realize what made this “subculture” high school of sorts run like it did. High school is an incredibly dynamic time for people, and I had changed as a person dramatically from my freshman to senior year. Like many, my freshman year was quite awkward, as remnants of my middle school self remained with me. As time went on, how, I talked to more people and grew out of my passive and shy personality. This did not just randomly happen without reason though. I began to learn and realize who I was and whom I enjoyed talking to in school, which explained why I spent so much time socializing with multiple kinds and groups of people. Everyone’s concept of “normal” was different, and high school was where I learned that lesson and will never forget.

I just lost a huge chunk of my life that I was never going to get back, but the world spun on, leaving me behind.

When people start high school they’re usually so excited. They can’t wait to experience everything that comes with being in high school, I mean who wouldn’t? Everyone says that high school is the best four years of your life. Now that I’m months away from graduating, I can’t say they were my best years but I can say they were my most educational years, of course I wouldn’t say that they weren’t fun because they were. When I say educational, I mean I’ve learned so much about myself and so much about life. I learned what the words family, love, betrayal, law and life meant. All these events changed me, and I’m glad they happened because I wouldn’t have learned all these lessons. My personality hasn’t changed; I’m still a carefree girl,

It was 2016, and I was finally a senior in high school. Being a senior in high school was something that I had dreamed of since my early middle school days, and at last, I was there. It was the last year in one of my least favorite environments, and I couldn’t wait to graduate and move away from the only place I had ever known. I had lived in the same town for seventeen years, and I had gone to the same school with the same people for thirteen years. I was looking forward to something new in my life. I was most excited for my senior year because it was the year that I was going to choose where I wanted to move away to and what school I wanted to spend the next four years of my life at. As the year moved along, I slowly realized that I wasn’t moving away and that I’d be staying home to attend college, which was one of the most difficult decisions that I ever had to make.

It’s the end, high school is finally over. It’s finally graduation day, and a wave of emotion hit, and I’ve never been hit with a wave quite this hard, not even at the beach. I’m not the type to get sad, but as I walk around in my long draping gown, my cap the doesn’t quite fit because of my abnormally large head, and my state championship ring I can’t help but be overwhelmed with emotion. Being the guy that I am I ignore it as always and I continue going around to teachers and give them hugs, thanking them for the help they’ve given me. Watching everyone take pictures, crying, talking about their futures, and how “they’ll have to meet up sometime” as if they’re moving to another country when they are just really moving to the next town over. I swore the day before, the week before, even months before I would be sad, and wouldn’t know what to do with myself when today actually comes, but I can’t seem to find the emotions. All of them are on the inside and won’t come out. On the inside I feel sad, and upset and I want to just hug everyone and cry, but I can’t. I don’t have time to think about crying, because of all the chaos going on around me. We only got one practice in ahead of time, just about nobody actually listened to what we are supposed to be doing, so everyone’s doing their own thing. I walk through the halls and realize this is my final last. I’ve had my last soccer game, I’ve attended my last football game and cheered them onto another loss, and now in