High School: The most ‘okay’ four years of your life
One thing I vividly remember about growing up is my dad telling me that his high school days were some of the best four years of his life. He qualified this by recounting funny memories, cool things he did, or lessons he learned. I kept this in the back of my mind as I watched my favorite teen movies that sold me the same impression.
One example, in particular, is ‘A Cinderella Story’ (the Hilary Duff one). The audience sees the main character is stuck in an awful life situation. She’s essentially a personal slave for her deceased father’s wife and her school life is subpar to match. Then she meets this guy and falls for him, there’s a Halloween themed dance, and the popular kids start to get upset with her. After the guy realizes he’s in love with the main character and the popular kids get over it, she gets into Princeton and her life is suddenly fantastic.
One thing the movie does well maintains the importance of high school as a time period in your life. If you figure out the trivial things, the movie urges, your life will be great. But most importantly, this plot archetype works to portray high school as something bigger, something that facilitates major personal events in your life.
I say personal events because generally, high school does help you move along the timeline of your life professionally. For most people, college is the endgame of high school. This will help you get employed, which can get you money, which can keep you in a good position in life, and so on. But the Hollywood portrayal of these 4 years chalks it up to a social game that can end in you winning or harshly losing, never really in between.
Which brings me to my point: high school is really not going to to be the best time of your life. Ultimately, you’re there for two main reasons: to learn things and to grow up. Anything else that happens alongside these events is entirely separate. It’s exciting to be trying new things, hanging out with new people, and seeing life in different ways. It’s also equally uncomfortable to be doing all of those things.
When you mix all of your experiences together, it’s really not leaning towards positivity, just neutrality.
You’re supposed to be studying, getting good grades, and figuring out what life is going to end up looking like for you. Whether or not you do that is entirely up to you, but for those who are striving for the perfect high school experience: don’t worry about it. If you end up having the best time of your life, perfect!
But if you don’t, there’s no need to worry. There’s more time for you to experience new things and more time for you to claim that something is “the best (number of) years of your life.”
Laurel Westphal is a junior at Metea and a headlines writer for the newspaper staff. She is a member of the speech team, but spends most of her time...
darkstripe • Nov 30, 2017 at 9:18 am
high school: at least it isn’t granger middle school(TM)
Red Herring • Nov 30, 2017 at 2:03 pm
Granger wasn’t all that bad, besides axt-pilon and a couple others, I genuinely had a nice time. Shoutout to sadler, mr. white. and mr.bransons heatlh class/ diagram. All of that was pretty fire and made for a pretty awesome experience. Besides the point i’m pretty sure every person lowkey hated middle school cause we kinda all looked like fugly babies. But yeah, coolio, am done.
darkstripe • Dec 1, 2017 at 9:25 am
yeah mr. sadler was the best teacher no questions asked
but i had an iep and due to this i had to constantly meet with the administration over it. the administration when dealing with ieps is severely incapable of doing so. they constantly thought i had the brainpower of a four-year-old and constantly forced me to do things i didn’t want to (i.e. go against my iep, force me to stand for the pledge of allegiance, force me to talk about my grandmother’s death the day i got back from the funeral, etc). the only thing that school’s administration cares about are its paychecks, and my family threatened to sue them at least once every year due to their horrid treatment of my iep. granger’s teachers are decent, but the administration itself and how it handles any student outside of the norm is less than desirable
No • Dec 1, 2017 at 1:44 pm
pls get over middle school
C28 • Nov 30, 2017 at 7:55 am
Another way of thinking about high school is as training wheels… ones which we are forced to wear.
I personally have lost all respect for the American education system since the realization that it teaches kids that we can just run for help to deal with things that we don’t like. We are treated equally as infants, infants who may not have free speech, right to assemble, or any say for the stupid rules that exist such as a Detention or ISS for kissing your girl/boyfriend, expulsion for possession of a prescription drug (which you may need to, well… not die), and a totally hateful bash on the satanic way of life by means of OSS or Expulsion (not the cult, the way of life, it’s actually very peaceful).
Highschool is a great place to be… presuming you are a mindless, socialist sheep, who will do whatever your told to do just because. otherwise, it’s just a place with a flawed education system, one that needs to be redesigned to not be so… totalitarian.
Kathryn Parenti • Nov 30, 2017 at 7:45 am
Your article touches on some very true ideas. As a high school teacher for 35 years, I still remember my high school years (graduated in 1977) as pretty amazing. I still hang out with people I met in those years…we still have that connection. You have pointed out a distinct difference in mindset and culture between coming of age in the 1970s and now…that “back then” many kids didn’t go to college. We had 3 choices~college, immediate career/job, or military. For many, college was not an option. You “launched” right then and there. Even if you went to college, as I did, you paid for it predominantly by yourself with money you earned from the job you held in high school and piecing together scholarships. I don’t mean to imply that we were “fully formed” as adults as we were most certainly not, but we were expected to fend for ourselves. The structure of our suburban public education now is drastically different, pushing the significant 4 years into college. Graduating from high schools with thousands of students doesn’t necessarily help either. You will be blessed to carry over your significant friendships from high school into the rest of your life. The perspective is valuable from those who “knew you when.”Thank you for this fine article pointing out this cultural change.
tavia kennedy • Nov 29, 2017 at 6:14 pm
Looking at the title i knew i would like it. As soon as I read it I LOVED it.