All my life I had people telling me that once I got out of the public school system everything would be different. I never realized how true that was until the fact that I had graduated had set in. I’m not sure how much people actually understand life changes once you are out of school until you have been graduated for around three months and the school year starts back up again, even if you start college immediately after (as I did) it may take a little while longer for the “Whee I’m in college” vibe to dwindle and the full force of the realization to set in.
The first thing I didn’t think so much about was how much I relied on having friends around me every day no matter what. At high school I always had a friend within arms length, and I could always rely on being able to see them again even if they were sick for a day or two. You never really had to attempt to stay in touch with someone. Your circle of friends may grow or dwindle depending on how social of a person you are, but nothing can really prepare you for when you start at a college where you know next to nobody. Maybe you will be lucky and go to the same college with many of your old schoolmates, but depending on class times and majors even that might mean you won’t see them often.
Of course you still have the weekends to spend with one another (depending on class loads of course), but chances are that they will have moved on and found other things that capture their interest and excite them in their own way, just as you may have found other things that interest and excite you. If I can offer anyone who reads this one piece of advice it would be to try your best to stay in touch with those whom you have known all of your life. They prove to be most precious to you in the long run.
Other things you have to adjust to is how much more of an impact things have on you once you are in college and out of a public school system. Public school offers a degree of padding for you even if you fail. You can always repeat a grade and try again until you reach the age cap of 21 where you are forced to leave, and if you fail a class it can lower your GPA, but in the end your GPA while important really doesn’t affect you as harshly as you would think, you can always get into a lower level school once you graduate and then build up your Grade Point Average until it is as high as you needed it to be, then you can move on. But once you are in college it is so easy to forget that school is not free, and that you can be kicked out if you fall below a certain average that the school will allow. Every class you fail costs someone money, and can cost you your scholarships if that is your method of attending.
You are also open to a wider world once you graduate, and you will be presented with many things that you may, or may not, be ready to face. Love will take on a whole new role in life, far beyond passing notes to your current boyo in class and exchanges of kisses in the hall. If you have moved out of your house and into your own apartment you have the opportunity to live with your lover which in its own way can lead to even more problems that your delicate pre-adult mind may or may not be ready to handle.
Another thing of note is the fact that you will feel that once you have graduated and even moved out that you are a full fledged adult, and depending on the person this may or may not be true. Being an adult or “grown up” is not based simply on moving out of the house and going to college, adulthood is based on your own personal maturity and responsibility. Chances are when you first graduate you probably do not possess the mindset of a full blown adult. Truthfully, this is something to rejoice. These are the years that you have to yourself, to be selfish and enjoy life to its extent, but its the ability to control yourself and still be responsible enough to be a decent human being and setting your own personal priorities and following through with them on your own, that truly puts you on the path of becoming an adult. Its easy to get lost in the pleasures that are available to you, but knowing when to stop and take care of the important things: school, family, work, bills. It is easy to loose track of what is important when you are offered such a large scale of freedom. I know I did.
Its so easy to be blinded by love at this point as well, once you are opened up to a whole new world of uncertainty people tend to grasp ahold of something stable and hold it as close as they possibly can. It can be so easy to loose yourself in the eyes of another, just think about how it was with your boyfriend or girlfriend in high school. Fantasies of marriage and having a family may come to you from time to time. If you are a girl you may find yourself wanting to have a child with your current lover. Because you are so young; however, you also don’t have such a firm grasp over how much certain decisions can affect your entire life, and you may find yourself being overly careless with things that you should have taken more time to think through. It can be confusing, and it will be hard, but hopefully throughout your younger years you had been instilled with some form of self control or you had been born with a reasonable amount of common sense.
This (of course) is not always the case, and you may find yourself doing things just to stay with someone whom if you had actually sat down and thought through the situation that the person who you are so desperately trying to keep ahold of isn’t worth your time in the first place. Please trust me when I say that making a life altering decision to stay with someone who wouldn’t have stayed with you otherwise is a mistake, and even if someone does decide to leave you then it wasn’t meant to be. Of course, there is always the chance that he or she may come back, but truthfully, would you really want to be with that person if and when they returned?
I suppose what I am trying to surmise in this entire bit of writing is to have fun yet act responsibly, but there is so much more that I really want to express to anyone who will read this. The sad truth is that more than likely anyone who will read this has gotten to a point where they really don’t have any real reason to read this in the first place. You are either an intelligent young adult or a completely full grown able minded person who has already been through this stage in life and learned everything that they needed to learn at their own pace and on their own time. Which in itself is the wonderful the biggest part of life: the adventure. Many people can only truly learn from their own mistakes, and that’s okay. The chance to make mistakes and learn from them is also a large part of growing up; the idea is to try to prevent the most major ones from occurring. It’s the major ones that will keep you awake at night, and make you stay locked inside of your room and miss out on countless hours of what otherwise could have been joyous moments for you to reflect on throughout your life.
So, In closing. Eat healthy, floss, and take everything that comes at you as level headedly as you can, be prepared for hard knocks and pitfalls, call your parents from time to time. Enjoy a sunrise here and there, listen to good music, don’t drink and drive. Do what you can to be happy without hurting others, do everything you can to make others happy without hurting yourself.
But please remember my loves to learn, but never forget to live.