c) What is something vexing that you’re currently wrestling with?
T minus 20 days to MIT.
Current Status: ( ͡ಠ ʖ̯ ͡ಠ)
Remember being nervous for the first day of school? Being excited to go back-to-school shopping, packing backpacks to the brims, picking out first day outfits, and being unable to sleep due to the nerves of not knowing where classrooms are and whether new teachers are nice? I haven’t felt that way in a very, very long time…
As July comes to an end, many of my younger friends are beginning to prepare for back-to-school season. Besides being ( ͡ಠ ʖ̯ ͡ಠ) about leaving family and friends to go to MIT, I’m feeling ( ͡ಠ ʖ̯ ͡ಠ) about leaving my high school. And while I will always be able to preserve my relationship with my friends and family, I can’t help but feel that the relationship with my high school is gone.
With summer comes too much free time to think, and by (over)thinking, I’ve been able to rationalize this loss, and knowing why I feel as I feel has allowed me to be less ( ͡ಠ ʖ̯ ͡ಠ).
Why do I miss high school?
My time in high school was great. I was in a (mostly) caring, supportive environment where I knew every classmate and had friends in every class (perks of being in a smallish school). By senior year, I knew how things worked and had built relationships with teachers and administrators. I’d even earned a pretty good reputation for myself, and was probably able to get away with a little too much (mainly tardies… I got away with SO many tardies).
Despite this, not all of it was good. There were drama within clubs. There was a LOT of unnecessary busy work. There were some bad teachers. And I’ve long since failed to be challenge by any course.
And because it’s how the human psyche works, I felt unhappy and stressed about my high school far more often in my last two years than I felt happy— mostly due to what I perceive to be blatant favoritism and so, so, so many deadlines and tests (I spent the entirety of May in AP and IB testing).
Yet, looking back, I miss it.
If you ask me what I miss, I will say the good aspects of school: goofing around during homeroom, playing cards during lunch, making home videos for class projects. Aspects that might have defined my freshman and sophomore years but have long since been masked by the stress and procrastination of IB, by homework and internal assessments and the extended essay and CAS and college applications.
I suppose I don’t miss all of high school.
So why do I miss high school?
I suppose I miss the familiarity.
It’s so easy to be content.
It’s comforting to be able to know every staff member, to not have to ask for the way to the nearest bathroom, to know exactly how each day will go, which teachers are lenient about deadlines, what lunch lines to avoid, and which doors will remain unlocked after the tardy bell.
The best parts about high school— friends and teachers— are people that I can keep in touch with. They are people that I can go to lunch with to share my excitements about MIT and their excitements in their new classrooms. I’ll miss that, but they are things that can be preserved.
What can’t be preserved is the familiarity.
I’ll be the clueless freshmeat (is that a thing in college?) again, lost and confused and lonely.
I’ll have to make new friends again, and that’s kinda scary, but also exciting.
I’ll have to learn my way around Boston, around public transportation, but that also translates to many new areas than can be explored.
I will miss knowing.
I won’t miss the drama, or petty arguments, or the terrible cafeteria food.
“You don’t remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.” – John Green
I suppose that in my fear of the unfamiliar, I’ve idealized my high school experience to create something that it never was.
Knowing this doesn’t change ( ͡ಠ ʖ̯ ͡ಠ) to ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). But it does change ( ͡ಠ ʖ̯ ͡ಠ) to ( ͡°_ʖ ͡°). And that’s at least a start.
And though it’s scary, it’s pretty exciting that, for the first time in two years, I’m once again nervous for my first day of class.
Blogger Application 2019 