Now that I'm a junior in high school, I know lots of things.

The public education system really takes the cake when it comes to teaching young ones what is truly important in the world. Really, I've never felt smarter than I do now. Especially since I have learned a total of zero things that I need to know for the real world.

Here're a couple of things I have learned in high school so far:

1. The nucleus of a cell is equivalent to the principal of a school.

Obviously, I will need to know this if I ever want to make it after I graduate. I mean, after all, when I'm applying for a job they will need me to know how a cell works. It doesn't matter if your future will not include science, everyone should know how cells work or they cannot ever be successful in the real world.

2. There are very specific cliques and you can only be a part of one.

You can only have one group of friends. All of your friends have to like the same thing (especially if you're considered "popular"). Liking many types of things and many different people is just plain strange. Like, people should really just stick to the status quo.

3. If you don't play a sport, you must have no friends.

How can you make friends if you don't take part in any athletic competitions? That would be impossible! After all, all the cool kids are athletes and have cool special abilities (unlike other people that have special abilities too just less cool because they aren't sports related).

4. Kids that hang out in the fine arts hallway? Yeah, stay away from them.

People want to spend their time learning music or painting? There's no way that they can be cool or have any personality. Really, that's just impossible. As if people who enjoy art could actually turn out to be decent human beings.

5. Band kids and chorus kids are enemies. Hands down. No Questions asked.

It doesn't matter that they are all musicians; there's no way on this earth they would ever act like they had anything in common. Band is way harder than chorus, or maybe it's the other way around. I'm not really sure but both sides will act as if they are more talented and hardworking than the other. That's just how it works.

6. People with good grades have no life.

If you have time to study for a test, you must not have anything else to do. Students who actually care about their grades only care about them because they have no friends to care about. It's not like people can balance their social life and their school work. That's just unreasonable. I mean only super heros can do stuff like that and nerds definitely are not super heros, they're just weird.

7. Making sure all your homework is done is much more important than getting a decent amount of sleep.

It isn't like teenagers ever need any sleep. Getting every single homework assignment finished certainly trumps being healthy and sleeping for an appropriate amount of time. Though studies show teens should get at least nine hours of sleep, they usually only get about seven hours. But hey, science doesn't really matter unless it irrelevant to the normal person's life.

8. Bare shoulders are the absolute most distracting things a male can ever lay their eyes upon.

Who can blame them? I know every time I have ever witnessed somebody's shoulder, I have not been able to complete my assignment. It isn't like boys have any self-control or know how to deal with their emotions. Since they don't, girls should be required at all times to never show any skin that isn't their arms below the elbow.

9. Also, in case you were wondering, the standard form of the parabola is...

(x-h)^2=4p(y-k) Was that not so enlightening. I mean seriously, that was probably the most important thing you have read all day long. You seriously need to know this formula at all times because you will probably need to graph a parabola when you are just living your everyday life.

10. Not all of these things are necessarily true, nor will they matter in twenty years.

In 20 years, we will forget most of what drama our days were filled with in high school. Most of us will forget about parabolas and animal cells. What I have really learned the past two years of high school is that you get to make life your own. You can either choose to accept the stereotypes we are given as soon as we walk through the doors on our first day of freshman year or we can choose to stand out. We can choose to be different and break down barriers that were previously set in stone. Choose to be that person. Don't let people tell you who you have to be. Take charge and choose to be unique. Choose you.