High school. The "best four years of your life." More like four years of you experimenting with things that could either make or break you. When you start high school you are immature, you think you're invincible and you want to grow up faster and move out. Then, graduation day comes, you have the jitters and you're sad to say goodbye to everything you've known for so many years and you think to yourself, How am I already graduating? You leave high school with knowledge that you can learn from a textbook but you also learn lessons that not even Cosmopolitan can tell you about. These are the five things I learned in high school.
1. Friends come and they go.
You call someone your best friend and the next day you find out she's talking about you behind your back. You'll go through friends quickly. You will love them one day and then next week complain about how annoying they are. You will go through many friend groups until you settle in with a few people who really understand you. You will learn that people will betray you and they will hurt you. It's just what teenagers do. They don't take anything seriously. I didn't really have a close net of friends until my last year of high school. They are all a year younger than I am but they are the funniest, most caring group of people I know. They know how to brighten up your day. You need to weed out a few of the past friends to find people who you can really create a bond with. You need to figure out what you want in a friend. Do you want someone who is always hanging out with you or do you want someone who you can call 24/7 cause you know they are always there for you?
2. You need to be yourself.
Being unique is very important. Everyone has a little bit of quirkiness to them. You don't want to be like someone because then who are you? Who will know your likes and dislikes? What makes you laugh? What kind of food do you like? Everyone has flaws. Everyone's flaws make them who they are. No one is perfect. You may believe that someone is perfect because of the clothes they wear or the friends they have or the lifestyle they live. Everyone has their own faults. Everyone is who they are for a reason. People who really love you will accept you for who you are and what you do. They will support you no matter what. Everyone deserves to have the chance to be who they want to be. You should learn to love yourself because at the end of the day, you are perfectly imperfect and that's normal. How do you want to be remembered? The girl who wanted to be like the next person or the girl who believed in everything they love and who lives life the way they want?
3. Sleep.
Sleep is, by the far, the most important thing. You are going to want to stay up all night and sleep all day. You are going to want to procrastinate and wait till the last minute to write a paper or to do a take home test. You are going to talk to your friends all night and not even think about school the next day. Sleep is so important, though. You need to sleep if you want to do good in school or in sports. You need sleep so then you don't get all grumpy. If you're grumpy then you'll ultimately have a bad day and then that'll make the situation worse. Sleep is also important for your health. When you don't sleep you tend to crave more and more unhealthy food. You also need to give your body a break. Your body needs to recharge. If you keep going and going your body will eventually just give up.
4. Respect your parents.
Your parents will always be up your butt. They will always yell and contradict themselves, but at the end of the day they do care about you more than anything and they want to see you successful. They watched you grow and grow and they just want to prepare you for the real world. You might get mad at them and you might say things you don't mean but they will still love you. They know you're stressed out and they know that they are being strict but they aren't doing it to hurt you. They do it because they know they can't be by your side telling you what to do forever. They are having a hard time letting go
5. Time goes by quickly.
You will never realize what you have until its gone. You'll never realize how fast time is going until you're finally finished. Everyone wants to grow up too fast. You'll want to get out of school quickly and you'll want to be in the real world. You need to appreciate what you have because once each day is over, you'll never get it back. You need to live each day like it's your last. You never know when life will take a turn. Life is unpredictable. You need to appreciate your teen years because that's when life is a little easier. You can just live simplistically. You need to focus on what you're going to do make a name for yourself.
Those are the five lessons I learned in high school. I'm grateful for what I learned. High school definitely wasn't the best four years of my life but, I had good and bad times, I found who I truly was, I learned so much, and it made me into the person I am today.
