High school: some of the slowest, but also some of the fastest years of your life. Each day may feel like a drag, but in just a blink of an eye, you’ve gone from a naive and over-zealous freshman to a ready-to-graduate senior. So while the time passes, make the most of your time in high school to make these four years more bearable.
1. Get involved
Too often people come to school wondering, “What’s even the point?”
Learning the quadratic formula. What’s even the point? Going to school pep rallies. What’s even the point? Finishing dull busy work for a class. What’s even the point?
And the answer to this question is complicated because “the point” in question is something you have to find for yourself.
If you give yourself a reason to go to school, then you will want to go to school. And the way to find this reason, this motivation, is by getting involved.
Try anything and everything. Join clubs. Try out for sports teams. Serve in your community. Make new friends. Get a job. Learn to look outside of yourself, and your love for the people around you will grow.
2. Try something new
If you take my first piece of advice and get involved, I recommend finding two different aspects to be involved in: something you love and something new.
Finding something you love may be easy, particularly when there are a million clubs at Cherokee. Whether your passion is rock climbing, chess, cross country, or reading, there’s probably a club for it.
But in order to grow as a person, you need to try something new. Step outside your comfort zone, and you may find new opportunities and even new passions.
3. Support your peers
This past year, we had a motivational speaker talk to the leaders of CHS. His name was Kevin Atlas, and his main point was that if we want to make our school a better place, we need to support each other.
This also ties into getting involved. Support your peers! Go to football games, but also go to basketball games, cheer competitions, band and chorus concerts, school plays (and more than just the end-of-the-year musical), art galleries, open mic nights, fundraisers, lacrosse games, track meets, tennis matches. Show up and show out. Show your love for your friends and their talents.
Dress up for spirit week. Attend as many school events as you can. Grab a copy of the school news magazine (please, please grab a copy of your school’s news magazine!). And I’m not saying this just because I’m in student government, and student government runs most of these events—supporting your peers, showing your love for them, is one of the most essential steps to turning a school into a community.
4. Be confident
This should be self-explanatory. If you ever want to get anything done, like ever, you have to have the confidence to go out and grab it. Be confident in who you are and what you stand for. And if you don’t have the confidence, pretend like you do! Fake it until you make it.
5. Learn to love Cherokee
This one is a challenge.
Cherokee High School may be the oldest school in the county. We may be the most crowded. We may have the longest campus (I mean, have you ever had to walk from 600 hall to the band room? It’s ridiculous) and have the lowest graduation rate by a margin of five percent. We may have our fair share of bugs, rats, and species of mold unknown to scientists. And we may be next to a sewage treatment facility that is consistently miasmic, to say the least.
However, when other people make fun of our school for any of the various reasons (there’s no shortage of reasons, trust me), don’t join in with them. Yes, we may have our fair share of issues. But Cherokee is more than a 70-year-old building—Cherokee is a community. And few other schools can claim the same community we have, a community that has lasted through generations.
So learn to love this school. It will grow on you. I promise.
If you get involved, try something new, support your peers, grow your confidence, and maybe, just maybe, learn to love Cherokee, then you will find a reason to go to school every day. And not just because you are required by law until you turn 16. But because deep down, there is a fragment of something to love about high school, no matter how awful school can feel at times.
By the time you become a senior, everyone will constantly ask you about your future. “What are your plans after high school?” “What college are you going to?” “What do you want to major in?”
But while everyone is looking forward, make sure to take some time to look back on your time in high school. And hopefully, when you look back, you will see the friends you made and the accomplishments for which you’ve worked.
The four years will pass anyways. You might as well make the most of it!
