i'll always be around

high school rant-resolved

i sent an email to a very trusted adult, an intern who helped me grow a lot last year. she told my class (of only nine other people) that we could reach out to her whenever we wanted. her name is emily. i vented about my worries about high school and asked her questions about things. here are some parts of the email she replied with. i thought it might be helpful to some of you.
(btw, emily just graduated from a very high up academic college in my state, so she is very smart and extremely knowledgeable.)

"Hi Chloe!! It is so good to hear from you and I'm really glad you felt comfortable reaching out.

I know that this transition is definitely scary. I remember feeling similarly as I was getting close to the beginning of 9th grade. However, as someone who's made it through in one piece, I definitely encourage you to try not to panic at this stage. I have a couple of things for you to keep in mind."

"There's no reason to overwhelm yourself right off the bat. You need time to transition to high school - you will be experiencing a lot of changes, which will take up a lot of time and space in your brain outside of class! So I encourage you to consider switching out of one or two advanced classes, if it might lighten your anxiety some.

Second, and actually related - I don't think that teachers/society emphasize this point enough, but your classes and grades are not the sole or even necessarily the most important factor for "getting into college" (and I'll write a bit more about that later on). What colleges look for is a whole person - and if part of your story is good grades, that's great. If part of your story is struggling somewhat but always working incredibly hard in school, then that's wonderful also. It's also important to know that colleges look for growth. Your freshman year grades/activities have the least amount of weight when colleges are looking at a student. If you struggle during your first year of high school, it's actually very common and expected! You are going through a big transition! Colleges will be looking to see how you deal with that in the long term - what choices you make to deal with issues that come up in the beginning. How do you grow? --- Does that make any sense?"

^this paragraph was extremely important to me. it helped clear my head a lot. take that whole thing into consideration. <3

"I hope that these ramblings and rantings will help you to keep in perspective the fact that you are an incredibly talented, smart, and kind person with a huge range of abilities and positive attributes. And I really do believe that you will find high school to be a lot less scary once you're actually in it. The idea of things is often much worse than the reality! But please do try to give yourself time and space to make the transition comfortably. Remember to practice self-care in all kinds of ways!"

take this as a reminder. self-care is so !! important. take care of yourself. love yourself. as hard as that may seem, you can do it.

for any of you that are going into high school (or even college//middle school !!) or simply transitioning in some big impactful way, i hope this kind of helped you.

it helped me for sure.

<3 i appreciate you, lovelies !!