It’s 7:20 a.m. on the first day of freshman year – you triple-check each of your text messages in the passenger seat of your mom’s car to make sure it wasn’t just a nightmare that none of your best friends are in your third hour geometry class.
Now trust us, we’ve lived in your shoes and felt that awful rush of butterflies throughout our bodies when we found out our first hour English teacher “doesn’t mess around with grading essays.”
Been there. Done that.
Or maybe, it’s not your classes. Maybe you walked into school and realized you’re the only girl who decided to wear red lipstick or the only boy to wear a tie. You can scrub off your lipstick with those paper towels that feel like sandpaper and you can even sprint to the bathroom to shove your tie into the bottom of your backpack. But you can’t let go of the feeling that everything in your life is going wrong.
Then there are times that you spill ketchup all over your white shorts or pronounce your chemistry teacher’s name wrong and the class just sits in silence. These are the horror stories you imagine telling your bridge club at your nursing home.
It is hard for us to realize in the moment that those little “embarrassing” events we all run into at some point won’t make us the topic of every conversation for the next four years.
All of these little stressors that shouldn’t take any toll on us can end up being what affects our mind and mood on a daily basis – but they shouldn’t.
According to LiveScience, teens are known for their self-consciousness and suspicion that everyone is watching them and judging their appearance. A new LiveScience study found that teens experience much stronger emotional, psychological and neural reactions than children and adults when they feel that one of their peers is looking at them.
You aren’t the only student who is constantly wondering if your entire class saw the 67% on your history test as it was passed back.
Now fast forward to 7:32 a.m. on the first day of senior year.
You roll out of bed five minutes before getting in your car to leave and you drive away wondering if a pack of Scooby-Doo fruit snacks really count as breakfast. You don’t even get a chance to think about where you are going to sit in your first hour because you walked in right as the “Party in the USA” minute music ended.
You’re wearing a wrinkled, baggy T-shirt from a random pile of clothes on your floor and some black lululemon shorts while everyone else is wearing their first day of school outfits: a jean skirt with a new off-the-shoulder top.
But you’ve come to learn that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that you decided to be different and wear something that you felt good in, that you felt comfortable in – who cares if you don’t look Instagram ready? When your fifth hour is a borderline arctic zone and without your favorite crewneck sweatshirt then you for sure would have gotten hypothermia.
It doesn’t matter that you don’t have a class with any of your closest friends. What matters is that you get to sit in a new class and meet people that you would never have met before because you joined the bowling team.
You realize this sophomore year when the nameless boy in economics class turns out to be your next best friend. You realize this junior year when all your AP classes enable you to create study groups with a variety of students you would’ve never asked for homework help. And you realize this senior year when on the first day of class you walk into every room and think “I won’t get to see all of these people in a year.”
You know now that worrying about how many people saw you were the only one with the bright red “incorrect” screen during a game of Kahoot is not what matters in your high school careers. It’s all about finding your passion in the computer lit journalism room, studying for your AHAP test next hour, and being a leader on the basketball team.
Whether a freshman or a senior, focus on the good things – living in the moment on Lancer Day, enjoying conversations with someone you don’t usually talk to, joining a new club that interests you. Maybe even devote a little time to the bigger, scarier stuff, like preparing for the next ACT and starting college applications. And put forth your energy to fix it.
But don’t focus on whether you might get a little side eye for showing up to school wearing the same smoothie stained sweatshirt as yesterday – it’s not worth your time.