This will not be your cliché letter about how much you’ll miss high school. This will not be a sermon preaching to you that you should enjoy every moment. I, myself, am a high school senior, and I’m not going to sugar coat things for the adults who so desperately want to believe that high school is the start of a golden path to success for students.

Ending high school, I am finishing with a 4.0 GPA and a plethora of amazing friends and memories.

However, I won’t tell you, "These are the best days of your life," because they aren’t.

I’m not trying to say high school was absolute torture, and I would rather die than go through it again. However, there are a lot of things I’d rather endure than having to relive the tears, nightmares about failing, rude looks, overcrowded hallways, disgusting food, subpar education, and the threat of being unsafe at school. All throughout high school, we are told to care about our grades A LOT, but when we do we get called "nerds" or "uptight."

How could I not care when my entire life I’ve been told that my performance in high school will determine the rest of my life? The pressure we are put under as high school seniors cannot be endured due to the fact that we are expected to make adult decisions while still being treated as children. Every move we make in school has to be permitted by an adult, but we need to choose what career we want to do for the rest of our lives. There is a constant stress put on seniors that everything is a ticking time bomb ready to explode: college applications, graduation fees, grades, FAFSA.

What about high school will I miss, you ask? Well, there were great things that countered the bad. The amazing teachers who did the best they could with the circumstances they are in. The friends who stayed awake with me to ungodly hours so we could study together. Moments when my entire class was together and you could feel the love of all of my friends. The people you are surrounded with can really make or break your entire high school experience. The friends I love will be the only thing I miss about the systematically flawed, public high school education I received. I am even lucky to have been surrounded by great friends, as I know many are not so lucky.

I am a person who puts great hope into the future. I hope for a future filled with prosperity, peace, and patience. I wish that all my friends will prosper in finances, in health, and in love. I wish for the world to find a peace that is very different from the one it has now. Lastly, I wish for patience to find all of these things. Despite being as hopeful as possible, if high school was supposed to be the best years of my life, I’d just give up now. Luckily, I know that life is what I make it, so here’s to graduating and moving on.