Graduating high school is an experience best classified as bittersweet. For many of us, the excitement of running toward our futures is mixed with the sadness of leaving behind life as we’ve known it for the past 18 years.
Many people feel like they should be overjoyed at the thought of leaving high school, or think they are obligated to feel like they can’t wait to get out and into the “real world.” But the reality is that there isn’t just one way to feel about high school ending. High school has taken up four years of our lives––some of the most formative years of our lives, in fact.
High school has shaped us into the people that we are now, has seen us through some of our highest highs and lowest lows, and, for most of us, has been the very definition of complicated. Our emotions about leaving high school can be, and for most of us probably are, just as complicated as the experience of high school itself.
As we count down the weeks, and then the days, until we graduate and are sent hurtling off into exciting new directions, the idea of the next step, which seemed so far away for so long, is becoming a scary and thrilling reality. We are standing on the brink of our real lives. The reality of that statement hits me more and more each day.
The future, holding college and countless other experiences and possibilities, is looming closer and closer. That knowledge is both endlessly exciting and incredibly intimidating. As I process the fact that the beginning of the rest of my life is only a few short months away, I can’t help but feel slightly nervous about the drastic change my life is about to take. What if I don’t succeed? What if college isn’t everything I want it to be? What if I didn’t make the right choice? What if moving across the country was a bad idea?
As the countdown to graduation starts drawing to a close, I have realized that it is very possible to feel ready for college to start, but not necessarily ready for high school to end.
Redwood High School is a safety zone, a comfortably familiar place before a huge unknown. It’s okay to feel nervous about leaving that behind. For many of us, this upcoming year will be the first time that we’ve lived away from Marin, not to mention away from our parents, our homes, and our friends. Some of us will even be moving across the country, starting over in a completely new location hundreds of miles from the place that we’re lucky enough to call home.
It’s understandable to feel scared about a future that’s so drastically different from the past 18 years. However, feeling scared has no relation to the kind of success that we will all find in whatever step we each choose to take next. Feeling scared doesn’t mean we aren’t ready and excited to experience things outside of our safe little bubble. If anything, it means that we truly appreciate just how good we’ve had it.
It is both exhilarating and unnerving to realize that this is the last time in our lives that things will truly be the same as they have always been.
I’ll be the first to say how excited I am to see what the next four years hold for me. But I’ll also be the first to admit that leaving high school comes with a hint of sadness, a little nostalgia, and a slight feeling of incredulousness that it’s really over.
