I think the biggest prank life has ever pulled on me has been high school. We spend four years with the same people, some of which we’ve been with since middle or even elementary school. We grow up with these people. We’re all constantly watching each other’s lives through Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok or whatever your chosen social media may be. We spectate, we talk, we judge. We learn to live our lives through the eyes of those we have known since nap times and reading circles.
As a loud theater kid, I often found myself wondering what others thought of me. Was I lame for singing show tunes in the car or for Hamilton playing on a loop in my head throughout the school day? Honestly, maybe. But who cares? It’s taken me four years to learn that this whole high school thing isn’t that deep. My advice: don’t let it take you that long to realize this! Thankfully, my anxiety about others’ perceptions of me didn’t hold me back too much, (I was still an avid, loud Players kid, thank you very much) but it definitely did have some effect on me, whether it manifested as me not posting that instagram picture that I liked out of fear of what people might think, immediate embarrassment after saying something a little too loudly in class, or not wearing that outfit because it wasn’t the “style” at the time. It all seems so silly and juvenile now, and I haven’t even graduated yet.
I’m seventeen years old, I’m barely even a full person yet. These four years are supposed to be about growing, learning, and experimenting. They are supposed to be about figuring out who I want to be when I do become a full person. Not about how many likes that post gets. I think too much of our adolescent life is lived according to how it will look to others, and oh how limiting that perspective is.
I have had a pretty good four years; there’s not much I would change about my time at Lower Merion. But, the one thing I would tell my freshman year self would be to laugh as loudly as she pleased, post that stupid picture, and wear that funky outfit because, as cliche as it sounds, she’s only going to remember how fun it was to do what she wanted, not what some people who won’t even remember the situation in a week thought about it.
Have some fun and don’t take yourself too seriously. It really is not that deep. It’s just high school, at the end of the day.
