To simply state the obvious, high school was crazy. During those four years of our lives, we find ourselves, we make friends and lose some, we decide what we want to do with our life; some of us may accomplish great feats, some may find the person they’ll spend the rest of their life with, and some will idle by and do the bare minimum necessary to graduate. No matter what you do, the basis is the same for us all: we wake up earlier than we want to, go sit through seven classes that we most likely don’t have any interest in, see people we couldn’t care less about, and bust our butts to work towards our three seconds of fame on that stage at graduation. Now, don’t get me wrong, high school was great and I met some incredible friends and have memories that I will cherish forever, but I do not miss it. I do not miss all the crap they throw at you, all the favoritism, all the unfair advantages, and of course, the dress code.

Where do I even begin, standardized tests, mean girls, rumors, dress code? There is so much to hate about high school. My *cue sarcasm* favorite one is the tests that determine our whole future. You could be valedictorian of your class and if you don't get a good score on the ACT/SAT, it doesn't matter. These tests can make or break your college acceptances, and that’s honestly not okay. Now, I know that where you go to college isn’t the most important thing ever, but some people work hard throughout all of high school and don’t get into their dream school because of one test. It’s not okay that we are told to be involved, get good grades, etc. and it honestly doesn’t even matter if you don’t get those test scores. Most colleges won’t look at applications if the test scores don’t meet their minimum, even though that student could be great in every other area.

Mean girls isn’t just a classic movie…it’s real life; and it’s not just the girls, the boys are sometimes even worse. People will start rumors about anything and everything people will listen to. The best part of high school is when you hear a rumor about yourself and your like “oh my gosh my life is so much more interesting than I knew!”. People will judge you no matter what you do so just be yourself. Always remember what Kevin G said, “Don’t let the haters stop you from doing your thang.” You don’t have to fit into any stereotype, you can be your own person. As Kevin Hart said, “Do you boo boo, do you!”

Dress code, dress code, dress code…where do you even begin? I could rant forever about how much I hate dress code, but I’ll try to keep this short. At my school, the dress code said we could not wear anything shorter than “finger-tip length”, no tank tops, and no leggings/spandex-like materials unless you are wearing something that is fingertip length over it. Right off the bat, the first thing I think is that “finger-tip length” is the absolute stupidest form of measurement ever. My arm span is the same length as my height, and I’m 5’ 8”, and because of this my “finger-tip length” is about mid-thigh while there are people whose is a quarter of the way down their thigh. During the last semester of my senior year, I decided to wear my favorite T-Shirt dress, which was fingertip length. A teacher at my school decided that even though the dress met the dress code requirements, the dress was “too distracting”. I had to go home because of this and missed the entire day of school. I believe the problem with the dress code, at least at my school, is that the teachers and administrators are not consistent. It is known that, where I went to school, the thinner girls never got dress coded, but the curvier girls did very often. Also, if you were a “favorite” or you had connections in the school (i.e. you had a parent who worked there) you never had to worry about being dress coded.It is absolutely not fair that there is so much discrimination between genders and sizes, especially at this age. The guys can wear tank tops or those tight spandex shirts, and never get dress coded because there’s so few restrictions on their dress code. It’s not fair, and things need to change.

Favoritism is such a huge problem at the high school level, and it’s probably the biggest reason (or tied with the dress code) about why I don’t miss high school. There are students who are able to kiss up to the teachers and administrators and get everything they want, while there are kids who bust their butts to make their way to the top and never get recognition. If you don’t kiss up to the staff you’ll always get the short end of the stick.

Now, this is a little bit more serious. Bullying is a real problem in our schools, and you see it every day. I am a strong anti-bullying advocate and I report bullying anytime I see it (no, that does not make me a snitch, it makes me a caring member of society). I have reported multiple cases of bullying, and each and every time the administrators at my school brought in the bully, talked to them about the situation, made them apologize to the victim, and then sent them back to class. It is ridiculous that you get in more trouble for dress code than you do for bullying. By only giving the bullies a ‘slap-on-the-wrist’ you are essentially telling them that what they are doing is acceptable. To this day, there are multiple bullying cases that I reported that still bother me, and the bully got off without even one afternoon in detention. How is this okay? It’s not, and our schools need to realize how messed up this is. We should be able to trust our teachers and administrators, but how can we do that if when we tell them anything, they don’t do anything to help us? I understand people are mean, and sometimes things get out of hand, but bullying is unacceptable and bullies should be punished.

All in all, high school was actually pretty fun, but there are so many things that need to change. I hope the schools start to realize how messed up they are and how badly things need to change.