1.28.2009

The Best Times of My Life

SPECIAL GUEST CONTRIBUTOR: WILL OLSEN

High School. What do those words mean to you? Whenever you talk to someone with pants up to their nipples, they will say that those are the best years of your life. "Cherish them!" they say, implying that we will never live in a time quite as grand. High School is where we grow up in to fine young adults and build life long friendships we will adhere to for the rest of our lives.

Oh wait, High School sucked ass.

Im not sure about the rest of the people on earth, but High School was probably one of the WORST times of my life so far. I think I would rather go through a mid life crisis than spend another week in that dump. Lets break down the grade levels with as much attention as they deserve (a paragraph each) to truly reflect on what it meant for me to be in High School.

Freshman year. Having just graduated from Middle School, the world was our oyster! With a chipper attitude and larger than life mentality, we burst through the double wide doors with confidence and vigor, only to be met with endless hallways and towering adults with peach fuzz. Thinking that we were invincible, we went off to class with our heads held high, which meant still several inches below the upper class men. All of the sudden we find ourselves lost in a sea of busy work, teachers incommunicado with one another. No longer do we have the confines of our cluster of teachers who talk to each other like they did in Middle School. There was no use arguing with our teachers, they did not care how much homework we already had. We quickly make our friends this year who are in the same classes as us, simply as someone to bitch about the workload to. I hope you chose your comrades wisely, because the choices you made then defined the lines of your place in the social networking system that was High School. Freshman year was still the second best year, because it was one of the fastest. I think it was over before I finished my report on the constitution. Oops!

Sophomore year, the only year that you had to stop to think how to spell what year you were in. Man did this year suck out loud. Now we walk through the same double wide doors, only this time fully aware of the shit storm we are embarking on for the second time. We quickly seek out the same people we knew last year, praying with everything we had that we again shared the same lunch period, lest we eat with the nerds. We again sink in to our busy work, only this time without enthusiasm as we now know that we can bypass the system by taking Ceramics and Foods 1 to lighten our load. We begin to take our job as student less seriously, forgoing nightly homework to play video games or search for a job. But alas, without a drivers license or car, we are again confined to our small cluster of friends. If we were lucky, our moms would chauffeur us to our destination of choice. Which, since we were still awkward was Ultrazone. That place kicked ass. But even with the new lessons learned, the year dragged on and on as we realized we were only half way through the shit storm.

And now it was time for Junior year, starting along the downhill trend. Our acquaintances from freshman year are now our BFFs, and we wouldn't dare break out of our social order. After our worst year so far, we now enter the double wide doors with our heads lower than ever before. Our previous experiences have left us bitter to the world. We now feel the hatred for incoming freshman, all of which seem to want to walk directly in front of you going half your speed. Their false sense of enthusiasm is sickening to you now, because for the first time, you feel better than them simply because you are older. You quickly forget how scared shitless you were of bigger people a mere two years ago. But now we are bitter, having done sort of poorly the last year due to our over confidence of being able to beat the system. Now with Physics and Chemistry at hand, we are again horrified at the work load. The school pounds the fact that college is around the corner in to your head, just to laugh as you squirm in your seat. Now instead of kick ass trips to Ultrazone, we have ACT tests and jobs and all that crap. God, what a terrible year. But before you know it, it is behind you, and summer break means more job hours. Now that 6 bucks an hour starts to REALLY add up!

And finally, we walk through the double wide doors to embrace a new year for the last time as we enter Senior year. By this point, our academic marks do not matter in the slightest. Our applications to the colleges of our choice have been sent off, and all we have to do is survive another 9 months. Our grades decline in to a dismal average as we now try to spend the last of our days in the high school community with those people we hardly knew Freshman year. We say our tearful goodbyes and plan for the future, shopping for dorm rooms and visiting schools. But after all of that, you realize there are still about 7 months to go. But fear not, no one cares what you do this year, for you are just a skid mark on the underwear of the school at this point. Your only point of existence is to do as little as possible, while still wasting as much time as is allowed.

When the time finally comes to snag your diploma, you cant help but look back at what you have and haven't done and accomplished. If you were anything like me, you probably still had every single piece of paper from all four years in your now 30 pound backpack, which you might have the strong urge to burn. You look back at the 3 or 4 true good friends you have made, and hope those people wont find better people to hang out with in college.

Yes, there is a lot more information to cover and awkward corners of awkwardness to explore, but you get the general point. There was nothing fun about those years except for the friends you have made who, lets face it, you will see 10 times a year at most after high school. But I guess it wasn't all bad. At least Ultrazone is still sweet.

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