#IncomingSeniorAdvice

The content of the last year three years has sucked the applicable word count out of senior year. Because by this time, you’ve been something. The feelings this year are polar, whether with people on opposite sides on their wish for senior year's life (or death) or within one person.

It’s bittersweet to end. It’s standing on the edge of a new journey, but cursing the sand that can’t catch itself and you feel yourself falling from youth. 

I don’t know about you, but by this time, you’ve seen bridges burned, campaigning for funding to rebuild, and reconstruction sites. The people you’re with now don’t seem like the people you originally walked in with. And for that, the end of senior year couldn’t come quick enough.

But, when the caps are thrown, everyone disperses: from the student seating into taking pictures into their summers and into the world. 

Know that senior year will come to an end, but be careful how heavily you beckon it. You might wish it had been deaf when spring comes. 

Enjoy ruling the school and every path you stride across, taking the torch and lighting success from the past into the future (:

My Senior Year: 2nd year Deutsch. Saying good-bye.Wishing for a reunion. Getting that "Hey" my heart had wanted for so long. Picking up where we left off, but better. Listening, prepping, and delivering my senior project. Seeing how everyone really had changed. Learning who to keep that spring and who to let go. Graduation outfits, parties, and the act itself. Throwing my cap and knowing so much had already flown away before. That final moment as I walked out of the stadium and was thankful for what high school was and who it produced at the other side of four years... (:

#IncomingJuniorAdvice

Hello, upperclassman.

Independence is the way I’d describe junior year. There’s driving, deeper relationships, and a new level of personal responsibility in accomplishing the work of the year of studying. 

Why is junior year so synonymous with studying and doing well?

When you go to apply for college next fall, the palette you’re about to create is the reference Admissions with have—this is what you want to be proud to show them. I’d go into the registrar to quest my transcript, and the last academic record I had for my universities was junior year. Whatever you want them to see, do it this year!

It’s tempting to do whatever will look good on your resume or up your likelihood on your CollegeProwler chances profile (I lived on this website.) But, it’s quickly found that when enthusiasm dies out, it’s not really passion. I started the year with four or five leadership opportunities, and by the end of the year realized that just because I didn’t end up liking them, these things hadn’t been failures—they narrowed my path and pushed me through the process of elimination. The far-off idea of going to UW or UCLA was put into perspective when I went on a leadership conference and was crying to come home at the end of day two. My 16-year-old tears for home showed me that locality was where I was meant to be, and today, I can say that experience did foreshadow what I now confirm. 

Introducing these social relationships to college, what do you do about the relationships at home and your physical college search? For my friends, I picture them marching, hailing that they won’t let anyone stop them from pursuing their dreams, they don’t want to “regret it later!” Romantically, it is a decision that stinks. And for family, sometimes, even more so. “How do I say good-bye?” meaning, “Where can I go far away enough that you’ll see my meaning in ‘farewell?’” or “Someone tell me how to survive the internal breaking of my circuit board.” It’s so exciting to fantasize and picture yourself saying that’s your school, the texts and photos that exist before you on the CollegeBoard website. 

Mindfulness is a key that I needed then that is perfect for your “now.” If you shut everything else out—everything—and think about school A, how do you feel about going there? How do you feel about not? And with options that line the rest of the alphabet, discern the emotion of each possible decision. Do you breathe easier when you think of not going? Hyperventilate when you think of holding back?  

There’s nothing wrong with taking a breath and taking a leap or likewise, appreciating your home and not wanting to leave. During my junior year, I saw a quote (actually, I think it was in one o those college preparation books—I must have had a shelf full of those, at minimum!) that went along the lines of saying you have to pick the place, the school, it said, where you’re going to be most happy—a place where you will be able to learn, for example, and be happy living. Amongst all the options, the place where I could learn, I remember this really hitting me, was a place where I would be happy and not drowning in homesick depression. So, for me, that perfect place is home. 

Find the place where:

• you can find solace on a terrible day
•  you have people to celebrate whatever it is that’ll make you skip home, giddy with joy
• you can study and learn what you want to successfully
• you feel like you’re not settling

For two of my closest girlfriends, it was up north and down south from here. What I love about living up our experiences is that we all picked the place that made us most happy, illustrating that one is not better than the other, but rather, that can only be discerned by the person who will be living there.

The bottom line is you can apply to more than one school. Apply near and far, so if genuinely want to stay with your family or boyfriend or someone who you want and need, you have that option. And make that far-off application! You may find you really need those wings when the clock of graduation strikes. (: 

Doesn’t it seem like relationships are serious here? Either people have been together forever or those people who do meet and start freshly dating instantly appear in the same seriousness. Is it because the newness has worn off and we don’t have those freshman flutters anymore? Is it the maturity that subdues the innocence associated with new love? 

Your older guys have now turned into college men as the clock comes closer to midnight and suddenly all the boys are younger than you. Maybe that’s the change: before, there were years of unknown guys. Now, the options for your age or a) your age or b) a year above. At least, at school. The rest are new, but that’s because they were registered into the district a year after you (; Younger guys do give more attention, but maturity differences expose themselves quite often. 

Prom. The dress, the glamor, the expectation! Make it yours, whether you go or not. My girlfriends and I spent one of ours in our downtown metropolis for a Sex and the City night on the town! To me, that was the best inspiration and fuel to get me through and remind me of what was to come; the reason I compose discussion board responses or heed to my too early A.M. alarm. 

That’s another theme I find in junior year—finding what makes you happy, regardless of what accomplishes the same in others. Our world is too large for one to be “weird” anymore. “Whatever you do, own it!” is what comes to my mind! Embrace prom for all it truly is or create your own night to celebrate your survival and the thriving in high school. Pick a school that you can see yourself at on your best and worst days, a job that will never feel like one, and every other infinite chance that you’re thinking about taking.  

My junior year: Trigonometry. Carpooling on our off time, driving through city, suburb, and country. Debit cards. “Stimulating the economy” by our culinary patronage. Volunteering every Tuesday, 11 to 1. Intro to Business. Wanting to be a businesswoman, whether global, small-business, or real estate. Realizing that I was picking financially set jobs that would leave me with economic comfort to write and deciding to throw it all off and just WRITE. Classes giving me new friends every three months. U.S. History. Forgetting all the careers in the occupational handbook. 

III. Opinions Are Just That

She made me feel like a slut.

No, it wasn’t something I overheard; rather, the opposite—to my face. And, no, believe it or not, it wasn’t someone my age. 

It was the assistant principal at my high school. I had first period as a front office assistant my senior year of high school and had just got done taking a stack of notes when she snagged me by the attendance window.

“Honey, where’s the rest of your shirt?” she asked loudly—and in front of four other staff members.

I was confused: I had a long sleeve sweater over a dress (NO cleavage or any suggestion nor any hints of anatomical curves up top), along with brown boots that even kept my knees from blushing. I thought she was kidding. I was stunned. I was confused.

Instantly filling me, as well, was the hate of how affection can be manipulated from its meaning. Like when she put her arms around me and gently touched my sweater, a gift “addressed” to me by one of my puppies for that Christmas, telling me, “Button this up.”

I felt horrible, humiliated, and hurt.

Because she treated me like a number who was arrogant against the black print of the student body handbook or naïve of what modesty is, with this view that one day I’ll know what a wholesome outfit looks like.

And it hurt even more because she didn’t know *me*:

If she only knew that two years earlier I’d given up he—who I thought was the love of my life—because I’d wouldn’t have sex with him and he left me for someone else who would; if she only knew the emotional spiral into depression I took and the physical twist down in the scale’s eyes; oh, if she’d only taken the time to get to know me and learn that at age 18, I still asked my mom if my outfit was appropriate for school; that I never leave the house in something I wouldn’t be ashamed to wear in front of my father; if she, my assistant principal, only knew the girl she was judging was someone at the mercy of the expectations others’ actions had created and now forced her to fight against. 

I cried that afternoon; hurt by her lack of decorum, angered that she thought she could say that and then be unaccountable the rest of the day when my mom marched up there to put her in her place, and instead, my tears were only “shushed” in the front of office for image sake, and instead, was given her e-mail (yeah—that didn’t fly), and even more furious that she thought I was just like everyone else.

Then I wondered what happened to the girl she said that to who didn’t have someone to fight for her—a furious parent defending their child or a self-esteem to know that it wasn’t true. Because even if that girl was wearing short shorts or a low top, she doesn’t deserve to be treated that way; to have someone talk to her so rudely and condescendingly and commit her to a judgment that that girl might not know how to fight off or realize there’s a battle for it. 

Thank goodness I rejected her opinion. Can you imagine where I’d be—what time, talent, and happiness I have and would be wasting—if I let her view lay me out? Especially when she didn’t even remember me on Friday as she greeted me with a happy, “Good morning!” It would have been like letting a hemorrhage flow only to have someone tell you it was only a scratch—and to look and discover it really only was.

Opinions aren’t facts, but we accept them as if they are. We register them with the same weight, accepting the same authenticity, accuracy, and authority. We may discredit those last three items, knowing the source of an opinion to be unworthy or truth’s merit or to know that the content is obviously false, itself, or something in between. Except I don’t know about you, but once I hear something like it, it’s like trying to erase Sharpie over and over; you go over it over and over, but it’s still there, and sometimes you think you can see it disappearing, but if you were looking at it for anyone else, you know it wouldn’t be true. The branding of black ink is still there.

It’s the fact of knowing someone actively thinks that about you; that when you come up, that’s what they reference, that’s what they feel about you. It’s easy to tell others to forget about it, because we know it’s not true. But, it’s personal when its ourselves; instantly, it’s like we’ve fallen into a pit and the only way to climb out is to refute those three A’s—authenticity, accuracy, and authority—and until we do that, we’re stuck. We go over and over it in our minds.

We could test those things

forever.

I’ve long searched for the remedy to caring about what others think. How wonderful it would be to literally not care what anyone thinks; to value others’ opinions so lightly, it’s as though it never existed. Time is the only remedy I’ve found to curing the sting of others’ negative opinions. The elapsing of hours and days dulls the edge and allows us to remove it from the skin of our self-worth; with relaxed surroundings, the blade will finally come out. Instead of constricting and holding onto that dig, the knowledge of our true self-worth swells up; we’re reminded who we are as *we* live with ourselves and see the lies fall against what we know. Our rejection of their opinion releases the dagger. It cannot stay. It is evicted.

That’s why there is a difference between “opinions” and “facts.”