LIFE!!
The After (High
School) Life
I often
think back to my own High School days...oh (not) so long ago. I think about all the popular people, all the
drama people, all artsy people, all the smart people, all the sporty people and
I think about how I didn’t fit into any of those
categories. Looking back I can safely
say I was pretty much invisible in High School.
I mean I did have friends and people that I cared deeply about but in
the grand scheme of my High School class, I was like the invisible man. When I think about all that two words come to
mind...THANK GOD!!!!!!!!!
I like the
fact that I was invisible, that I missed out of 95% of all the junk that an
adolescent has to wade through during those years of your life. The problem for you reading this is the
amount of stuff you have to deal with is much deeper and thicker than when I
went through it. Whether you are a
believer in God or not I want to be there to applaud you and give you an epic
high five if and when you make it out on the other side of High School without
too many emotional or psychological scars.
When I went to High School I like think of all the drama and stuff I
dealt with (this does not include academic stuff) as a sprinting race. Only I’m not on a racing track, I’m standing in a field of mud and gunk, up to my knees and I
have to wade through all of it in order to finish the race. When I got to the finish line, they handed me
my diploma and a nice pat on the back saying, “Those
were the best years of your life.” I thought if those were the best years of my
life, I want to quit life right now, cause if that is the best life has to
offer, life didn’t do a very good job.
For you,
however, the amount of muck you have to run through is way past your knees, it’s more like at your waist.
When I hear about things that teens are going through today, it’s like someone decided you should skip learning how to grow
up and just expects you to be grown up.
I can’t believe what I hear my some
of my students telling me is going on in their schools. Teens, kids making decisions that affect the
rest of their lives and setting them on a path of death and total heartache and
they don’t even realize it. Teens dealing with subjects like sex,
homosexuality, smoking all kinds of wacky and awful stuff, drugs, alcohol, deep
depression and the list could go on and on.
Why are the “best years of your life” so terrible?
I want you
to hear this, what I am about to say. If
you are bored out of your mind reading my book and are thinking about putting
it down, just give me one more paragraph.
Then you can throw my book out for all I care, but I want you hear this
next statement and really think about it to the point of believing it as the
truth (cause it is). YOUR HIGH SCHOOL
YEARS ARE NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT, THE BEST YEARS OF YOUR LIFE. They are so far from the best years of your
life, the true best years make High School look like that movie with the great
trailer, but soooo disappointing when you actually go and see it.
Your High School Years are NOT the best years of your
life!!!
I can’t say it enough, if fact I think I might just randomly put
it in other places in this book, just to remind you, if in fact you keep
reading. But if I am boring you now, you
have my permission to put this book down because I have said my main
point. Your High School years are NOT
the best years of your life. If you want
to find out why....keep reading.
See the
problem is when you are told that these are the best years of your life (which
they are NOT) you never want to grow up and really experience the best
years. When those are the best years you’ve had, you spend the rest of your life (missing the best
years) trying to relive and recreate those 4 years and you never really grow up
and become an adult. I could give you so
many examples of people I know, who are adults in age, but are still in High
School in the way they think, because they bought into this bologna that the
best years are back there and not in front of them.
My friends
listen to what I am writing to you. Life
is so much more than the drama you go through in High School. There is life (great, wonderful, exciting
life) after you get out of School. I
work with students from the grades of 5 to 12 and I can’t tell you how much they don’t
know. I hear them say all the time about
this and that happening in school and I just want to shout at them, “NONE OF THIS CRAP IS GOING TO MEAN ANYTHING IN 10
YEARS!!!!!!!!!” Students worry and obsess about things they
are going through now that do not amount to anything in the grand scheme of
life. Do you know what the “popular” people in my generation got
out of being popular, when they were in school....not a darn thing.
They other
week I was looking through my Senior Yearbook (talk about self-inflicted
torture) and I came to the “Best of Pages”. You know best
eyes, best actor, best school spirit, best smile, most likely to succeed, and
so on and so forth. Those people in
those pictures, did they get anything out of those awards?, no, not a single
thing but a picture in a book, which for most normal people will sit on a book
shelf and collect dust.
If you get
voted for one of those awards, good for you!!
That truly is great for you; I’m not trying to diminish that
recognition in anyway. What I’m saying is realize that even though that is a good thing,
in the grand scheme of life, it really doesn’t
matter.
Most of
you may be thinking that I’m just bashing High School,
especially if you are having or had a good High School experience and I want you
to know I’m not. My intention here is not to use this book as
a platform for my verbal vomit about the awfulness of High School. If you had/are having a good High School
experience, that is great!! I am truly
happy for you. My intention is to get
you to see that there is life after High School and getting all wrapped up in
the drama and social system can lead to consequences that set you up for
failure for the rest of your life.
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