What It's Like To Be a Senior in High School. (The unedited, non-Hallmark version)

Mind one.
Growing up as kids, we were force fed ideas of how High School would be amazing. It's an epic four year journey. You're Frodo Baggins and your friends are the fellowship. Following that analogy, Mount Doom is graduation, and senior project is the One Ring. (Sidenote here: I'm not Frodo. I hate him. Sam deserves all the credit. But that is a debate for another time. I'm more like Legolas. I do cool shit and don't talk a lot, and get things done. Mind two is my Gimli.) Halmark and Lifetime and Disney have been shoveling heartfelt, well meaning, changing point in your life crap down our throats since birth. I feel like I should make some attempt, here in the last year of my High School education, to explain why High School is not like the movies.

To start off with, once you hit high school, everyone becomes deeply concerned with your emotions. You'll be approached by more than one person, likely more than once, with things like. "Ready for all those hormones?" "Just stay positive, it's a rough time." or "Don't be afraid to talk to me, I'm here." And all of that sounds great. Until you tell them that you're fine, everything's good. Then they give you skeptical looks. Like come on kid, don't lie, tell me what's wrong. They are almost disappointed that you don't have something wrong with you. This will continue your whole high school career. In fact, pretty much your entire existance as a teenager will be filled with people being overly interested in how you feel. Here is my advice on this:

• When people genuinely care about you and are concerned, talk to them. Free all those emotions, because the will bottle up to the point where you just angst your way around. 

• If you are happy, just doing fine. Tell people that. Even if they don't believe you. 
• If you are not happy. And not doing fine. Tell someone. Someone you trust. Because angsting alone is just not very much fun. Your best friend is a good choice here. Because you can angst together.

• There is a 10,000% chance that at some point your emotional levels will be flatter than the plains of Oklahoma. If you are anything like me that will be your emotional standpoint for 98% of high school. I didn't give a damn. Still don't. About most anything or anyone. I don't exactly recommend this because at some point this state of no emotion (except anger, you'll still be able to be pissed off.), will crack and you'll be drowning in feels with no way out. And unlike everyone else who has been suffering a roller coaster of emotions through out high school, you don't know how to deal with feelings. Feel a spark of empathy for a character in a book? What is this madness, what is feelings, what is, what. So once again, I don't recommend genocide on your emotions. It makes things easier in the short run, but in the long run you will have to deal with them.

Secondly, brace yourself because the hormones really are coming. Everyone gets impacted in different. I'll keep using my personal experiences as an example. The only real difference I noticed, was just amplification. I already didn't give a damn, but now I didn't give a damn more. I also became more sarcastic, and all over I became the poster child for teenage passive aggressive rage. Which really just means that I didn't care about things, unless I had been annoyed enough, then I hated them.

Hormones affected my classmates in various ways. For some people they had enough feels for everyone in the world. Seriously, they would be nearly hysteric over someone else's breakup.

For some, they discovered their genitals and proceeded to hump everything in sight.

Others acted out.

The last two are not recommended. Basically, don't set expectations for high school based on other peoples horror stories. Just run with it. What happens to you, can be the exact opposite of what happened to me. There is no right and wrong here. There is only survive.

I could keep going, but really it's just more of the same idea. Every single person is unique, and every single high school experience will be unique. If you judge yourself off of other peoples expectations, you will fail every time. Set your own standards and live up to them, it won't always be easy, but just remember. When you graduate high school STD free, childless, clean and sober, without an addiction to anything rougher than sugar and caffeine, and you go off and start a life, saying no to parties was really the best choice. Remember kids, herpes and children are forever.
 MIND TWO YOUR TURN.

Mind Two:

SENIORITIS. SUCKS. BALLS. I NEVER WANT TO DO ANYTHING EVER. NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER. WHICH IS WHY I'M WRITING THIS INSTEAD OF STUDYING. 

Also, by high school you should have learned some grammar, like how to properly capitalize a title, for instance...Mind One. (M1. I have you here to peer edit for a reason.)

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