An opinion that a lot may disagree with, but hear me out. High school is overrated! Growing up in the 2000s, a lot of our favorite shows were streaming on Disney Channel and Nickelodeon. Everyone had their favorite shows but we can’t argue over the fact that High School Musical was a big hit, if not the most popular show back then. My point is that most of our favorites were high school dramas and romcoms, which there’s nothing wrong about of course. But what is wrong is our expectations of high school when we were kids. I thought high school was going to be exactly like all the shows I've watched.
Due to years of brainwashing about the assumed social ladder of high school, when I first walked into my high school, I figured everyone would be gathering around the football players while the cheerleaders would be walking around in their uniforms 24/7. To my surprise, neither of these assumptions was true. The school does not start gossiping like mad just because the quarterback breaks up with the captain of the cheerleading team. If anything, the athletes are just normal people, not some form of high school royalty at all! And the main sports aren't cheerleading and football, every school has their sport based on the student votes or a school tradition, but that doesn't mean it's either football or nothing.
As we grew up and finished our first 3 years of high school, the final year was coming close. Now, this is why I wrote this blog, to mainly address the fact that senior year is the most overrated thing to ever exist. Everyone pushes you to do your best this year just to get into a good college and a popular major your parents are pleased with. As a senior student myself, I find it ridiculous! So much pressure is put on our shoulders for what? I've thought about it deeply for a while and it makes no sense at all, I've asked college students too, and it's clear that senior year of high school shouldn't be this stressful. Whatever recognition we receive as students for academic achievement will be of no use other than to get one to the front door of a university of higher learning. It gets you no further. It's all of no value after school ends.
I've finished my first semester out of three this year. The relief that washed over me as soon as I finished my last exam could never be explained. All I can say is that this semester was the longest time I've been stressed this much. However, I am not writing this to complain about the stress because the academic experience differs from one student to another based on their goals and learning capacity.
I'm writing this to prove a point, which is that this isn't fun like we thought it would be. There are no big sports games or annual events. People don’t care about you, they would just compare your grades or call you out for things. The amount of homework and projects assigned days before final exams is frustrating. When you talk about your problems and address them to the counselors they would just tell you that they can't do anything about it. You don't really make a lot of friends and if you do, none of them will last. Everyone is two-faced and you'll see yourself run away from the drama.
“We take bullying seriously in our school” is the biggest lie I was told. Schools make anti-bullying campaigns not realizing that most of the bullying is just during high school hours. I think they call it “the character building phase”, except that for most people, including myself, it’s destructive, and they carry the scars of bullying for the rest of their lives.
I also can't understand why the education system is so poorly designed, grade 9 and 10 are so easy, but when you enter grades 11 or 12, it instantly becomes so much harder that students are not able to survive. Academic pressure increases significantly and students are not prepared to deal with it. To add to my point, we never learn about things that are considered "normal" after high school. Why can't we learn about paying our taxes, or dept, or how to apply for college even. How do they expect us to magically know everything after we graduate when just days ago we would ask to go to the bathroom.
I genuinely can't wait till I graduate just so I can move on and never look back. I think we should stop sugar-coating the idea of high school and spread the truth.
Yasmeen Masoud
Beyond The Blogs
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