And so, COVID-19 may have cut your senior year short. Well let me assure you that despite the world feeling like it has ended, it has not.
The worst part about leaving for college, or so most think, is leaving your friends. And yeah, leaving your friends sucks. And it is scary as hell because what if no one likes you? (That probably will not happen if you approach the situation properly by the way, but we can save that conversation for another day.)
When I went to college, I swear every adult I knew told me that my college friends would be the ones to last. To which I would politely reply (to myself), “you don’t know my high school friends”.
Well, apparently, I don’t know my high school friends. Or I guess more so I did not know who we would become. Don’t get me wrong, I love my high school friends and we still try to meet up on break and shoot the occasional texts. But it is nothing like I thought it would be. And I’m OK with that. Sure, there are some people that I thought would play a bigger role in my life and now I consider it a blue moon type of day if I hear from them. But I don’t let it keep me up at night.
You see the thing is, high school was just one stupid dinky bubble. Like are we kidding? I went to school with the same few hundred kids from the age of 5 until I was 17. And I really thought they’d be my friends forever? As if there wasn’t a whole other world with billions of different fishbowls waiting to be discovered? (Again, love my SV friends-but there is more to life than one group of emotionally confused teenagers.)
What I am trying to get at is that I need every senior right now who was actually willing to read this, who is internally (or externally) crying because they might never go to school with their best friends again, who is stressing about which college to choose or whatever, to make a promise to the two of us right now: do not let the idea of making new and better friendships hold you back. During my first semester of college, I was afraid of getting too close.
Yeah, I am kind of a guarded individual. But I was worried about replacing high school. It sounds really stupid I know but it’s true. I felt bad at the thought of making better friends with kids at college, not that I even really thought it was possible. (I did not think about the fact that when you live with your friends you get close ten times faster.) But the high school friends that want to stay in your life will if you let them.
Do not let the fear of losing them stand in the way of meeting some of the most amazing people you’ll have come across so far.
I can honestly say that I was someone who loved high school. Like wayyyy more than I should have. High school dances were never the biggest deal to me, and I only ever once sat in a student section, but every extracurricular I did meant the world to me. They still do, and I would not change my experiences for the world. It all just seems a lot smaller now.
I know that your whole world feels like it’s crashing in, and way too soon at that, but that breaking world is pinkie sized. There is a whole world, bigger than you can imagine, waiting to be discovered. So, cry on, but don’t lose sight of all that’s ahead.
All my love,
Grace :)
