Sitting on the couch in my basement at 12:30 am on the first day of 2013, I felt a little bewildered. The new year snuck up and surprised with me. Somehow, in the midst of Harbinger deadlines and basketball games, cross country meets and chemistry tests, I felt that a whole year had slipped away from me.
2012 was a whirlwind at best. I don’t know what made it that way. My schedule was busy, I traveled a lot, I met new people and enjoyed high school. No matter what, it went by too quickly. And no matter what, I learned an important lesson- cherish every second.
All I wanted during freshman year was to get done with it. Stop being “fresh meat.” Stop being the least important player on the basketball team, the most annoying grade in the school, the only girl from my class on The Harbinger.
I reached the summer and officially became a sophomore. Then I immediately began to wish I wasn’t a sophomore. Wasn’t in that awkward “gap year” between being the cute freshman and the exhausted, hard working junior.
All I heard from junior friends was how bad their year was. How hard school was, how taxing sports were, how much they just wanted to move up to senior year, to have an excuse to laze around or take easy classes. All I ever hear from my senior friends is how much they want to get out. How boring East is, how they’re going to move to Costa Rica or how much they just want to go to college.
No one wants to be where they are. Everyone, it seems, wants to leave where they are. Move on to the next great thing. Become better, stronger, older, wiser. No one is happy with the place they are in at this very moment.
But I am. It’s taken me almost two years at East, but in this new year, I’ve realized that being happy with where I am is extremely important.
Not that I don’t look forward to my junior and senior days. Not that I don’t want to leave and go to college, or travel abroad. I have goals. I have dreams.
But those are for the future. I don’t want to wish away my high school years. I want to enjoy them.
Some people say that high school is the best four years of your life. Honestly, I hope that’s not true. I hope life keeps getting better. But in the meantime, I’m going to enjoy high school.
Enjoying being younger than half of my friends. Enjoy having a lighter homework load than juniors. Enjoy listening to my senior friends talk about college without having to stress about applications.
Life is made to be lived in the moment. If I have one New Year’s resolution, it’s to stick by that rule for the rest of the year.
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