High School Shouldn’t Fit in an Instagram Collage

Claire Mikulski, Online Editor

I have some news that may upset some of you. I’m here to tell you that the High School Experience was introduced many years ago by a heartless marketing team with the sole intent of making teenagers feel insecure enough to spend obscene amounts of money on goods and services. In short, the High School Experience doesn’t exist.

A lot of people spend a lot of time worrying that they’re “not doing high school right.” High school doesn’t have to look like “Gossip Girl” or “Friday Night Lights” or “The Breakfast Club” or “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” for you to enjoy yourself. You shouldn’t be able to define whole swaths of your life with one or two words. “Netflix.” “Studying.” “Partying.” “Sports.”

“Music.” “Scholastic Bowl.” Why not do it all?

High school isn’t a pre-packaged gift set you can get for 15-percent off when you use the promo code “PUBERTY” at checkout. It is four years that you spend at Lyons Township High School. You will feel terrible and you will feel amazing. I’ve had my A-plus-good-hair days, and I’ve had my crying-in-class-ripped-up-cuticles days. Some days suck, and some days are livable. All of it is legitimate because you lived it.

I’ll end this column with a few words of advice, and a mangled quote, so essentially what I do best. Seniors, please don’t resent the last four years, but be prepared to release them with grace. Juniors, squeeze everything you can out of your last nine months at LT. Leave nothing unsaid. Sophomores, if you survived the first two years, there’s no reason you can’t survive the next two. Freshman, please don’t feel bad that your first year of high school wasn’t magical. You’ve only just begun, and the best things take time.

Please allow me to abuse a line of Walt Whitman to close out my last shout into the void as a LION columnist: your high school experience can be large, it can contain multitudes. Don’t condense years of your adolescence into a few sepia-toned quotes in an attempt to chase a happiness that isn’t real.