The 5 Lies They Tell You About High School

The Bigger Picture

#3: “You'll have nothing to worry about,” said every middle school teacher ever.

Think of high school like one big test. It’s multiple choice, but there are only two answers. The big question? What’s more important to you: social status or your goals in life? Unless your goal is to have a high social status, then this doesn’t apply to you.

But to those who plan to go somewhere in life, you can’t have the best of both worlds. I tried and my mom had to either drag me out of bed in the morning or pick me up from school because I fell asleep in class. I tried keeping up with my school work while trying to climb up the social ladder. I was determined to gain so much love to be homecoming queen.

I had been knocked down so much growing up - my freshman year being the last straw - that being crowned homecoming queen would make it all worth it. That my efforts to make people happy would gather up and reward me with a title and crown. I had made friends in every type of clique. I was basically selling myself for votes. I gained so much respect that I was feeling good about myself. Junior year was going to be my year to conquer and change this ugly pattern of sorrow and feeling sorry for myself.

My confidence shot up and I started attracting the boys. I hadn’t had a boyfriend before, so I was unsure on what to do in a relationship. Jason Cole Burke asked me to be his girlfriend December of my junior year and I was walking on air for the rest of that school year. He was the star player for Springfield High School’s basketball team, so dating him brought so much attention to me. I was soaking it all in.

My summer before senior year was filled with nonstop adventures. I snuck out of the house to go to a bonfire, I went streaking with some girls I met at a birthday party, I got drunk for the first time—never again. I went on a road trip to Vegas, spent every night of that summer at random peoples’ houses. I was having the time of my life.

I hadn’t seen too much of Jason that summer because he went off to a Basketball camp on the bay. He came back in late July. When he came to my house to surprise me, we got in our first fight.

“I leave for seven weeks and I come back to this disaster?!” By “disaster”, Jason was referring to my behavior, not my bedroom like I had thought at the time.

“So I have a few clothes that need to be hung up, big whoop.” I flopped back on my bed.

“I’m not talking about your room, Brooke. I’m talking about your behavior.” Jason said.

“Look, I went to bed at three last night, and you want to come see me at seven. You crazy, bruh.” I was acting ditzy and laughing at my own stupid self. I knew deep down I was messing up big time, but I didn’t want to care. It was the shots from earlier that morning messing with my common sense.

“What happened to you, Brooke?” Jason rumbled on into something about how I’ve changed and he fell in love with the person I was before this summer and he doesn’t understand why I ended up like this.

I wanted to tell him to shut up. I wanted to scream at him for making me feel bad about being the kind of person he wanted, for being the kind of person everyone wanted. I was nice, confident, fearless, and perfect. I was Courtney...

Wasn’t I?

I dozed off in the middle of Jason’s speech. The last thing I remembered looking at was the ceiling fan. It was spinning, just like my world was. When I opened my eyes - who knows how long later - my head was in his lap. He was stroking my hair, and I let him for a little while until he kissed me on the cheek and got up to leave.

“Where are you going?” I called after him.

“To the NBA.” Jason stopped at my door. “You changed a lot this summer, Brooke. And I changed to, but we didn’t change in the same ways...I’m sorry.”

I watched Jason hastily walk out of my house as he disappeared from my life. I was no longer Jason’s girlfriend, no longer the girl people expected to be homecoming queen. I was back to where I started. A mess of a human being trying to be something I couldn’t. I was starting to forget why I wanted to be somebody else in the first place.

When your middle school teachers tell you that you’ve got nothing to worry about in high school, they mean you don’t have anything to not worry about. I flunked three classes my junior year, got too caught up in being loved by my peers that I neglected my studies. My GPA as it was so far wasn’t going to even be looked at by the colleges I planned to go to after high school. I was lucky to even make it into a Junior college.

I never thought I would be the girl to not succeed, to barely graduate high school. My efforts got me on the homecoming ballot, but it didn’t win me the crown. Courtney walked off the football field that night wearing a flowy gown, sparkling tiara, and a bouquet of flowers. I envied her from the stands. It began to rain, but not a single drop hit Courtney. Jason, homecoming king, held an umbrella over her head. Disappointment wasn’t the only thing raging through my body.

My brain was cluttered with you failed, you lost, and you’re not good enough. So while I laid in my bed the night of the election, crying hysterically because once again, nothing was going the way I had planned, a thought popped into my head: I had tried so hard to be Courtney that I sacrificed my grades, my relationship, and the person I was. I asked myself if it was even worth it. Then hated myself for my answer.

However, I managed to sit up straight on my bed. There was a picture frame collecting dust on my disorganized desk. It was a picture of my first day of Kindergarten. I was smiling straight into the camera. My smile stretching from ear to ear, and my eyes squinty. It made me think of the days I spent in that colorful Kindergarten classroom, drawing pictures of what the older me would look like while all the kids played dress up. It reminded me of when the classroom was as dark as it could be in mid-day and all the kids were softly snoring because it was nap time. I laid awake, facing the popcorn ceiling. On my fingers I would count how many years I had to wait before I would be in high school.

When I was a kid, I saw high school as the media perceived it to be: a glamorous happy ending to your childhood. TV had candy coated high school. In Hollywood, high school was when you met your future husband, it was when you did crazy things with your best friends you grew up with, and it was when you were happy because you were old enough to do what you wanted and young enough to have enough time for it all.

High school wasn’t supposed to suck. It wasn’t supposed to hurt. Why couldn’t my life be more like a movie? In approximately an hour and a half, there’d be a resolution and I’d walk away happy.

When I was five to when I was seventeen, I didn’t see the big picture. It’s good to worry sometimes, but only for the things that will benefit you. I was worrying about the things that didn’t matter, instead of the things that did. Like myself. Like my future.