If You Had A Bad High School Experience, Please Read This
There will always be hard times, but these four years will make you stronger and more resilient.
farinasfoto/ Shutterstock By Candice Zhang
Being in your young adult years can be tough. You’re trying to navigate the world and the art of growing up, and some say you’re too busy to look at the past. But whenever you’re feeling down, you feel the need to look back.
Pictures and words from childhood, adolescence, and (maybe) infanthood all appear in your head, like a scene from a Disney movie.
“Adolescence. The years of total awkwardness,” you say to yourself.
Then, you suddenly remember the changes you experienced in adolescence, specifically in high school, when everything starts to hit the fan.
You remember changing your friend group every so often, hanging out in the washroom during lunch, and witnessing teachers or guidance counselors ignore your complaints.
To you, these high school experiences are a dark, black hole in your head. You remember those times being so bad that you try your best to push those memories away.
But because they were seemingly a significant part of your adolescence, those memories are hard to forget. You eventually find it more challenging to forgive yourself for your past mistakes.
But if you graduated high school recently and the memories of being peer pressured are fresh in your head, I promise you that new doors will open. And even if you have been out of high school for a few years, you’ll still have new opportunities.
Whether you’re going to university or college, you will have a new environment, experiences, and people to meet. Tons of other people are in the same boat as you, trying to navigate through the transition. You can study courses and programs that interest you and pick your own extracurriculars.
Sure, there will always be stressful days, but you’ll discover more about yourself.
If school wasn’t your forte, you don’t have to jump on the post-secondary bandwagon immediately. There are many jobs you can apply for to open doors to the working world.
But if school and jobs and the hustle and bustle are too much for you, take a rest from all that happened. You don’t need to put your head down and keep working.
If high school has taken a toll on you, you deserve a break for completing four or five more gruesome school years. During this time, you can learn more about the world by traveling or meeting new people who may teach you new life lessons.
If you had a bad high school experience, those four years don’t define how your life will turn out. They won’t define where you’ll end up, and they won’t define the person you’ll become.
There’s more to life than high school. And as you graduate, you’ll have more to experience.
Sure, there will always be hard times, but these four years will make you stronger and more resilient.
The nature of life is always facing obstacles and roadblocks. You will always experience stress, but if you’ve dealt with so much during high school, you’ll find methods to manage the challenges you’ll face. You’ll become more resilient.
But eventually, everything will fall into place.
There are billions of dreams you can follow. You have a whole life ahead of you to figure out what you want. And whatever happens, will drive you forward in your own journey.
Candice Zhang is a writer and frequent contributor to Unwritten whose bylines have been featured on Her Campus, The Strand, and others. She writes primarily about health and wellness, relationships, and current events.