high school advice and thoughts

This is for anyone still in high school and looking toward or applying to college, I hope this helps.

as of 9:00pm June 6, 2019 I am officially done with high school. It’s a bittersweet feeling knowing life will never quite be the same, yet at the same time its anticlimactic.

I thought it’d be appropriate to share some thoughts and advice to those right behind me and those who still have most of high school to go.

Awards

This is a little bit of a rant, so bear with me. Senior year everyone talks about what chords they are getting. Everyone wants to graduate with some sort of extra recognition. I sat through a 2 hour awards ceremony honoring a lot of hardworking people, but I couldn’t help wondering if nearly killing yourself is worth the chords or the certificates. I’ll also say I know a good amount of people who faked service hours to get chords or something along those lines, so do what you want with that information.

I want this to be as helpful as possible so I’ll be completely honest, I didn’t get any chords but I did get a medal for having above a 4.0 GPA. Chords honestly look cool and maybe that’s a reason to aim for them, but I didn’t have a passion for honors societies and am proud of how I spent my high school years outside of school.

2. Involvement

I feel like everyone’s high school advice and “how to get into college” advice is to be involved- but what does that really mean? Well as someone who unintentionally avoided honors societies and school sports, I was instead involved in horseback riding (my sport), volunteering with disabled kids at a therapeutic riding center, volunteering with 3 year olds at church, young life, and I got a job. Now you’re probably thinking “Grace how did you do all that and manage to sleep and go to school?” and the answer is I didn’t.

I volunteered every week with the therapeutic riding center until the middle of my junior year when I got too busy, so I paused that for a while. Similarly, I stopped volunteering at church around the same time when school and my job picked up. My job was an April-October commitment so I’d take the winter to focus on school. I guess this was my version of finding balance. Young Life was always super important to me so I consistently made time for that during the week.

I don’t think anyone should force themselves to do things they don’t have a passion for or don’t like just to try to build their resume or get recognized at graduation. I found what I liked (horses, kids, people, Jesus) and followed those passions. In the spirit of full honesty, I still got into UVA.

3. Stress

Hear me when I say this: the moment I stopped putting my worth in my academic performance was the moment I truly began to thrive. We all complain about school but I hate seeing so many people anxious and stressed to the point its all they think about. Do your best and if you fail a test you’ll learn life goes on. Life’s going to go on no matter what, you can choose to be constantly stressed or choose to let it be.

4. People change

I hate the way this cliche sounds, and I honestly walked into high school thinking most of my friends would be the exception- man was I wrong about that. For the most part, people change for the good and its so fun to look back at where we started and where we’re ending and how we’ve grown together. But it’s also hard to look back and see who you started with that you’re not ending with. This may be a little too real but alcohol and parties put distance between people, decisions you or your friends make can drastically change your relationship in a short amount of time.

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My high school experience was unique in that I went to two schools. I honestly don’t have much to say about that except it’s made graduating a little less sentimental because my life drastically shifted not too long ago. Maybe it just hasn’t hit me yet, I know there will come a time where I miss waking up and going to school with the people I’ve known for either the last 2 years or longer.

The best thing about graduation might be that life moves so fast you have no choice but to live in the moment. So here’s to high school, here’s to summer, and here’s to college 🙂