Seniors.
Allow me to be one of the last few people to address you as such. It's June, following the May that was supposed to hold your graduation ceremony. Any other year, this would be the calm after the busiest month of your life so far. Being the ever-so-lucky class of 2020, this year has been an experience unique to only you and your classmates, something equally special and terrifying.
I can't pretend to know what it's like to lose out on memories you've been groomed to dream about for a lifetime. Every Disney sitcom, every teen movie, every young adult novel, I'm looking at you. Especially as young girls, we have practically been taught to equate a senior prom with a wedding on the scale of lifelong importance. Your graduation ceremony is fighting with the eventual birth of your first child to break the top three best days of your life (anyone who has actually sat through a graduation ceremony chuckled there).
The point is, the hype surrounding your senior year of high school is so painfully real. Personally, I had been saving prom dress ideas on Pinterest since I was in the eighth grade. Ironically, I opted out of going to my own high school's senior prom. I was "too cool" ... or something like that. But that's another story. The difference is, I had a choice. I can't imagine the feeling of being told your spring semester was cut in half, half of your goodbyes were just "see you after Spring Break!" and your last walk through the hallways already happened. I can't imagine counting down for an entire school year, only to never get to see the coveted last day of high school ever.
Don't get me wrong, I know there are worse things in the world than missing a night of wearing a dress that's too tight and way too expensive, with an itchy flower on your wrist, spending the whole evening with a boy you won't even talk to in two years. I get it. But when you spend eighteen years of your life expecting to have a certain experience and it's snatched away from you, you're entitled to a little pity party.
Pity party over. You're done with high school, you tossed the metaphorical cap in the air. If you've taken senior pictures, you've probably literally tossed the cap in the air.
What now?
In my infinite wisdom of 21 years, I've learned a thing or two. Typically the hard way. It tends to be a good teacher. However, if I can spare anyone the trouble of learning some of these lessons themselves, it's worth a try. Read on to hear a compilation of the various nuggets of wisdom I acquired since graduating high school.
Your plan for the next four years will most likely be night and day from the place you actually end up in 2024. And that's okay.
Once upon a time, I was enrolled in Southeast Missouri State University, a school four hours away from my hometown. I had sweatshirts with a RedHawk on the front and the founding year on the back. I had a GroupMe with the incoming class of 2016 and snapchatted my three future suite-mates every day. I had already signed the acceptance letter of my scholarship and enrolled in my classes. I researched the city I was living in and planned to transfer from the Springfield Texas Roadhouse to the one in Cape Girardeau. My bedroom at home was full of dorm accessories from Bed, Bath and Beyond. I had already Google mapped the distance from my university to my high school boyfriend's. I had it all planned out.
Then one day, I woke up.
I hate the idea of a dorm. I'm terrified of living with strangers with no space or time to myself. I don't want pack all of my belongings into my 2002 Acura and move four hours away. I don't want to rush sororities with my 'froomies' and eat in a more expensive high school cafeteria. I went to less than one quarter of a football game my senior year, why did I suddenly think I wanted to be at college tailgates every day of the fall?
I told my parents I changed my mind. I texted my roommates I was out. I dropped my classes. I hid my SEMO sweatshirt in the back of my closet. I left the GroupMe and threw away all of my orientation papers.
I enrolled in classes in Springfield. I got a second job working at a bank. I leased an apartment.
Fast forward four years, I've been out of college two years now, with a bachelor's degree in Finance (who am I?) from a school I had never even heard of. I work in Commercial Lending (18 year old me is yawning) and I discovered living alone is the best investment I have ever made. The aforementioned boyfriend and I went our separate ways, turns out high school relationships rarely last (who knew?).
This is not at all how I would have pictured my life. But sitting here in my cozy home, with my high school and college diplomas collecting dust in a closet somewhere, there isn't a thing I would change. Except maybe the price of rent. You get the sentiment.
One year from now, half your classmates who went away to school will be back in Springfield, transferring to a local school. Half the ones at a local school will drop out or take a gap year. Some of the lifelong athletes will hang up their jersey and decide their sports career is over. Old passions will die, new ones will ignite and replace them.
Believe me when I say that you will look around you in four years and realize that the life you're living isn't matching what you wrote down on the planning chart your high school guidance counselor gave you back in the day. That's the beautiful part.
If I was confined to living only the life I could dream up when I was 18 years old, I'd be in big trouble.
Having a plan is important, but so is having an open mind. Listen to your heart, listen to your gut, and listen to the ones who have been there before you (we're very wise).
You are not the only one who didn't rush a sorority.
See also: you're not the only one who isn't living on campus. You're not the only one who's taking a gap year. You're not the only one going to community college. You're not the only one staying in your hometown.
You're not missing out on anything.
The uncertainty of this new stage of life has a way of leaving the door open and letting doubt creep in. Every Instagram post you see of a girl and her 'big' will leave you wondering if they're having more fun than you are. Every old classmate posting about their adventures with their dorm roommate will make you feel like you're missing out on some pivotal college experience. Every time a friend brings up how hard their classes are, you'll wonder if you made the right choice taking a year off, or if you're just putting yourself behind. It will always be something.
I walked away from the roommates and the tailgates and the greek life, and yet I still had the audacity to waste my own time feeling sorry for myself when it seemed like all of my high school friends were living their best lives and I wasn't.
You aren't alone in your decision to pursue the path that you chose. Don't spend so much time fixating on the ones you didn't choose that you forget to live the one you did.
Half the classmates you have will get arrested at some point in the next four years. Make sure it isn't you.
Harsh? Maybe. True? Sadly.
I have seen far too many mugshots from the Class of 2016 for my liking in the past four years. It's incredibly humbling to see someone who tested higher than me on every exam show up on the Springfield Mugshots page. No one is invincible. Not the nice ones, not the pretty ones, not the athletes.
Be smart, be safe, and never let yourself fall into the trap of thinking it could never happen to you. Mugshot lighting isn't flattering and screenshots are forever.
The word 'popular' means nothing outside the walls of high school.
Popularity is a social construct that doesn't exist outside the confines of your alma mater. Don't let yourself believe in a hierarchy based on shallow traits and superficial concepts.
If you've graduated high school and still concern yourself with who's popular and who isn't, you probably watched too many shows on the CW growing up. The world is far too big to worry about being important to anyone besides the people who are important to you.
You don't have to keep in touch with your high school friends.
The sad reality is that the majority of your friendships are based in proximity, not commonalities. You will quickly realize that your circle is tight because you had three classes and a lunch period together and saw each other every day, not because you share anything deeper.
A big part of my first semester of college was spent trying to keep my high school friendships intact. We'd meet up and catch up, and eventually realized we were all vastly different people going in vastly different directions. And that's okay. Some are married, some are playing college sports, some didn't go to college and some did. One is living in Montana (and loving it). I will always have the utmost love and respect for the girls who fill my high school memories. I live to see them grow and smile and make lives for themselves.
Just because you grow apart from people doesn't mean there's beef (for the adults reading, beef means drama, bad blood, animosity). Some people are only in your life for a season and it's okay for friendships to fade.
If you don't have a reason to be in college, don't go to college.
Just like our world puts way too much emphasis on senior prom, it does the same with college. While it's wonderful that there is so much enthusiasm for higher education, it isn't in the cards for everyone. College is expensive (understatement of the century) and shouldn't be used as a pastime.
If you don't know what field of study or career you want to pursue, save yourself the money and wait until you know. Otherwise you'll end up taking classes you may not need, wasting time and money, and you'll end up frustrated.
Don't go to college just because it's what you're supposed to do, it may not be what you're supposed to do.
You will probably 'fall in love' several times before you really do.
I could (and probably will) write an entire post on the different kinds of love you will find in your life. They all play a role in preparing your heart for the one who's meant to love it.
No matter how infatuated you are with your high school boyfriend and how crazy it drives you when people tell you it probably won't last, it probably won't. You know what? That's perfectly okay. You will both go off and find people better suited to the human beings you're becoming.
You'll probably fall for another someone (or several someones) before you find what you've been looking for. Just remember that every failed relationship is either a lesson or a funny anecdote for future dinner parties.
Alcohol weight is real thing.
It's all flip cup and cheap beer until your jeans don't fit and your leggings are see through. Alcohol weight sneaks up on you, the silent attacker. Anyone who loves them a good time will find themselves packing on a little extra insulation come sophomore year of college. The cafeteria meal plans don't help, and neither does the Taco Bell dollar menu when you're a broke college kid.
Doritos Locos Tacos count as a balanced breakfast right?
Allow me to give you a visual aid. Below, you'll find me in three different stages of life. Before I ever drank alcohol, when discovered alcohol and took it to excess, and now where I only drink on occasion. In all three, I was eating healthy and working out almost every day. In the middle, I had discovered drinking for the first time. I was going out every weekend and drinking by the pool during the summer. I didn't change or stop my healthy habits, I just picked up an unhealthy one. I didn't even realize my body was changing, until one day I realized I had gained close to 30 lbs. It truly does sneak up on you. People are quick to warn you about the dangers of alcohol but rarely do they mention how it affects your body. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that telling college students to limit their alcohol intake will do any good, but don't say I didn't warn you. Moderation is your friend.
'High School Skinny' isn't real.
... and you'll never again have your high school metabolism. My high school self burned more calories sitting in Algebra sneaking Cheez-Its under the desk than my adult self does doing HIIT and lifting weights every day. It's an unexplained form of sorcery that's just best not to question.
Do not, and I repeat, DO NOT look at old pictures of yourself from high school and wonder why you aren't that skinny anymore. YOU WERE NOT DONE GROWING THEN. You weren't a fully formed human being. I was practically a fetus in my senior composite, how can I expect to go back to that weight?
On the same note, don't compare your body to teeny high school girls once you're in college. They are children.
This stage of life isn't to find a husband. It's to find yourself.
Everyone has their own version of the 'engaged by 22, married by 23, kids by 25' plan. Let me just tell you, that plan will fly out the window when you see the selection of potential suiters you have within the ages of 18-22. Spoiler: most of them have the emotional capacity of a walnut and probably don't know how to do laundry.
Your late teens and early twenties aren't a treasure hunt leading up to a husband. Some people find their 'soulmate' in their 8am Econ lecture freshman year, others don't find theirs until they've been out of college for years. There's no way to predict it and there's no way to force it. Don't treat your freshman year like your own version of The Bachelorette.
Spending your one and only youth searching for someone else will drastically reduce the amount of time you have to focus on finding the person that actually matters: yourself. This is the one time of life where selfishness is not only allowed, but encouraged. Make decisions without consulting anyone else (except maybe your mom), go off the grid, learn to cook for one person. Do things that you won't be able to do when you share a life with someone else.
Spend your time after high school focusing on becoming the person you want to be, not finding the person you want to be with. If you truly focus on being the most happy, genuine version of you, the rest will take care of itself.
You don't have to know what you want to do for the rest of your life.
Believe it or not, when I was a little girl, I didn't dream of one day spreading tax returns and studying finance (I still don't). Throughout my life, I had hundreds of dream careers and dozens of majors that I couldn't decide between. When I got to college, I blanked. The majors I actually wanted to pursue (i.e. creative writing) probably wouldn't have paid the bills. Thus, I fell into the pattern of decision making that so many college students do. I declared a major based on the stability of the job market and the promise of constant employment. Finance was a great major for me personally, as it pushed me out of my shell of blissful ignorance about the way the world worked and challenged me to understand things that I otherwise wouldn't have ever learned. I feel that it made me more well rounded and for that I'm grateful.
Now, working in commercial lending, I wouldn't necessarily say I have a passion for what I do. However, I like what I do, and it gives me the financial and freedom to pursue things I truly am passionate about. Plus, you know, government holidays are nice.
All that to say, there probably won't be a moment at the college fair when the clouds part and the heavens shine golden light down upon the table for one particular course of study and you just know it's for you. You might have several different majors you're stuck choosing between, or you might be stumped with not a clue which path to take. Don't put the pressure on yourself to have your major declared by the time you set foot on campus for the first time. If you do, that's awesome, but be open to change. Changing your course isn't failure, and rerouting isn't the end of the world. You will grow and change a monumental amount during your college years, make sure your plan has the flexibility to grow and change with you.
One day, summers will cease to exist. Enjoy each one a little extra.
In high school, summers are the best time of the year. No school, no schedule, no responsibility. At some point, all of that has to end when we enter the cold and lonely real world of year round employment. Between internships, summer jobs, and entering the workforce for real, everyone has a different age that they experience their 'last summer'.
Let me tell you, there isn't much more frustrating than sitting in a freezing cold office, with florescent lights overhead and a headache from staring at a computer screen all day, only to hop on Snapchat and see all of your friends at the lake at 2pm on a Tuesday afternoon. Not going to lie, it sucks. We would all rather be laying by the pool all week than sitting in an office, but unfortunately for me, I have expensive habits and it costs money to exist. Therefore I'll continue to sit in my office and harbor minor bitterness to everyone my age who still gets a summer vacation.
You don't know when your last 'real' summer will be. Enjoy every moment of it. Mess up your sleep schedule, go to the lake every chance you can get, get sunburnt (don't tell my esthetician I said that). Soak it all in.
Learn to laugh when you fall down, not cry.
The ability to laugh at myself is a fairly new skill I've learned. For the longest time, I lived in emotional confinement because I was afraid to admit failures or struggles to anyone. I refused to admit when I was struggling with a class, refused to admit when I got a credit card and charged it too high without realizing, refused to admit when I forgot to pay personal property tax on time the first year I was out on my own.
You will never feel heavier than when you attempt to keep up a perfect facade. The impossible standard of success in every aspect will suck the life right out of you. You will fall down, you will make stupid mistakes, you will embarrass yourself.
Being able to laugh at yourself is one of the most healing abilities to have. Let go of the expectation that you will do everything right the first time and never need to ask for help or have to admit to struggling. Failure is inevitable, but knowing you'll shrug, chuckle, and bounce back is what takes the sting away.
The only opinion that matters about your life is yours.
As a new high school graduate, everyone will have their two cents to give to you. With any luck, the advice will be accompanied with a 'Congrats Grad!' card with a check inside. Be prepared for the most unsolicited advice you've ever been bombarded with before. As you listen and learn to everyone with their tips and tricks and warnings, remember one thing.
You are the only person who has to live your life. No one else has to walk through every day of the life you build. Regardless of other opinions or judgements, build a life that suits you. Don't change your trajectory for anyone. You never want to wake up and realize you crafted a life based on societal expectations and opinions of those around you and it isn't the life you want to live.
Be open to advice, be teachable, be curious. Accept help when it's offered. But remember that it's your life, your opinion, your journey.
Learn to love your own company.
Like I said before, living alone was one of the best investments I ever made. I don't mean financially. If we were talking financially, I would probably say that my air fryer is the best investment I have ever made.
After high school and after you leave home, there is far more alone time than you'd think. Being comfortable being alone has been my saving grace. Living alone allowed me to dig deeper into my own thoughts and feelings, uninterrupted by anyone else around me. I found the version of myself that existed when no one was around to watch or cheer me on or judge me.
I love my own company. I'm hilarious and know exactly how I take my coffee.
In all seriousness, make time for yourself. Learn to think for yourself. Learn what you like and dislike when no one is around to influence it. People will come and go in life, but you will always be constant. Make sure you know yourself and love yourself.
If you've heard bad things about him, save yourself the trouble.
Not to say you should believe everything you hear, but trust me on this one. If he has a bad reputation or you've been warned, just don't go there. Leave it to another girl to find out if the bad rumors are true or not.
Your comfort zone is a cage.
Coming out of high school leaves you with invisible constraints keeping you inside the walls of what was expected and acceptable where you came from. Don't be afraid to do what no one else is doing, go where no one else is going, wear what no one else is wearing.
Like I said before, you are the only one who has to live each and every day in your life. Get out of your comfort zone and find what life has to offer beyond the invisible fence that keeps you tame.
The sky will seem like it's falling, but I promise, it will pass.
If my calculations are correct, the world has ended approximately zero times in my twenty one years of living. However, there are about 57 different times when I swore that it was and went full crisis mode.
You're young and tough and strong and resilient. Or if you aren't, you will be when the next four years are over. I'm not just talking about college being challenging. It definitely can be, but what I mean is that the stage of life where your teenage years end and your twenties begin is the most tumultuous and transitional time in your life. Everyone is growing and changing around you, you're evolving within yourself. There will be growing pains and heartache and enough confusion to last a lifetime. Every hard experience is molding you into the magnificent adult who will actually get to live the life you're building.
You don't actually have to pull all nighters cramming for finals.
Here's another comically false movie trope: spending finals week in the library, surviving off of Takis and Red Bull, pulling all nighters studying. None of that is real.
If you pay attention and keep up with your classes, nine times out of ten you'll be fine. Plus, if you don't know it the night before your exam, staying up all night cramming isn't going to change that.
This is just another way society likes to romanticize the idea of the struggling college student. If you study better at 2am with copious amounts of caffeine running through your veins, then by all means. Just don't spend your entire semester dreading finals week and expecting it to be an insurmountable challenge where sleep is nonexistent and everyone is suffering. It's a myth.
You will have instructors who just don't want you to pass.
When I said above that nine times out of ten you'll succeed in college if you keep up with the workload and study during the semester, I meant it. However, the one out of ten does exist. Some professors take pride in having a course so challenging that they're known for tanking students' GPA. It's frustrating, and doesn't make a lot of sense considering the instructors' job is to instruct and if that isn't done adequately it should be a bigger reflection on them than the students.
Unfortunately, it's just a fact of college life. Use the app RateMyProfessor, ask around, do your research. Most of the time you can figure out which classes to avoid like the Coronavirus (too soon?).
There is no "right way" to do this part of life.
Like I said so many times during this novel of a post, no one else has the perfect roadmap for life. There is no right way to navigate your young adulthood. Of course, there are very wrong ways (see item three on this list).
You will feel at times like you're completely off course and have no idea what you're doing. That's normal. There is no golden manual for how to survive college and become a successful and happy human being. That's because the formula for everyone is different. Taking the path I took to get me to my current happy state might not work for anyone else, and taking someone else's path might have left me miserable. Don't compare your journey to anyone else's.
Find your people.
I already mentioned how it's okay to grow apart from your high school friends. When old things die, new things can take root. Opening your mind to finding people who have more in common with you than just homeroom is another amazing investment into a happy and fulfilling life.
One of my favorite sayings is that you are a culmination of the people closest to you. When you look around at the company you keep, are you proud to be a reflection of that?
Don't be afraid to distance yourself from people who don't bring out the best in you, don't support you, or don't push you. Stay far away from people who make you feel like you're hard to love.
This is your one life, don't waste it being anything but surrounded by people who love you back.
College isn't always four years.
One more thing on the 'everyone has a different journey' point. Some people take half the time to finish college, some people take twice the amount. So many things go into consideration. Financial situations vary, some people have to work and take fewer courses, some people change their major and start fresh, some take gap years. While a college degree can be finished in four years doesn't mean that it has to be.
I got my bachelor's degree in two years, and my boyfriend was in school for five. Do I use this as a reason to remind him I'm smarter than him whenever it comes up? Absolutely I do.
Outside of that particular example which works in my favor to gloat about, the amount of time it takes you to finish college isn't a reflection of how smart you are. Don't let anyone make you feel like your accomplishments are lesser because of the amount of time it took you to reach them.
This is the most fleeting, painfully long, magical, dreadful time of your life.
I had previously used the word tumultuous to describe this phase of your life, and I think that's the best way I could have put it. Your world is ever-changing, and it seems to spin especially fast after high school ends. I experienced my deepest heartaches and my most euphoric, happy days in the past four years.
Both the best and worst days of your life haven't even happened yet. You will discover things about yourself that amaze and terrify you. You will surprise yourself with your own resilience. This isn't a race, there is no finish line. This a journey where the goal is to find the happiest way to travel through life.
Enjoy the newfound freedom, drink the cheap beer, try all the new things, laugh until you cry. Study hard, but don't forget to look up from the textbook and relish in this new life. Never fall into the trap of thinking you have it all figured out. Some of these "lessons" I wrote are still a work in progress in my own life. Just because you will one day cease to be a student doesn't mean you should stop learning.
Congrats graduates... welcome to the world.
High school, college, and now. If only the first two girls knew what adventures were to come.
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