At some point in our childhood, we’re all taught to believe that the start of high school means it’s time to grow up, to be responsible, to start behaving like an adult. Maybe, to an extent, this is true; high school comes with so many new freedoms we weren’t awarded at younger ages, one being the highly anticipated 16-year-old driver’s license acquisition. But there’s one part of high school we all seem to forget about so easily: we are still very much kids.
When you’re little, it’s easy to want to be like the “big kids” and to wish you could jump forward to those years in your life when you’ve outgrown junior clothing sizes; I think that’s just as common in high school as it was then, minus the junior clothes. But in all honesty, growing up isn’t all that it’s made out to be. Figuring out how to tread the line between teenager and young adult all while just surviving the school week is a challenge we’re not always warned about. Looking back now, I’m not even sure how necessary it was.
It feels like just yesterday I was walking into Grosse Pointe South after being dropped off by my dad for my first day of freshman year. But trust me, you will blink one day and suddenly be 18 years old, looking for a college roommate and getting ready to leave home. And as excited as I am for this next part of my life, a part of me is going to miss being a kid with nothing real to worry about, and an even bigger part of me wishes someone had been there to tell me to lean into that kid side while I still had the option; pretty soon it won’t be.
So while you still can, enjoy those rides from your older siblings you need to get anywhere; enjoy the silly board game and movie nights with your friends on the weekend; enjoy having someone else make dinner for you every night; simply enjoy just being a kid.
There’s no need to rush through life, or to try and skip to the next phase, it is going to be here before you even know it. You have decades of your life to be grown up, to go out and act like an adult, but you only have 18 years to truly be a kid–soak up every moment of it.
