Yolo?

You know how in high school, everyone goes through some phases? At least on some level...

There's a period of bliss, (freshman year) where you've made it to high school and classes are fun and friendships are simple and easy and everyone loves everyone. This one is nice. Everyone is innocent, and discovering the newfound independence of being labeled a high schooler. Everything is new and exciting because you're doing it as a high schooler. Going bowling is cool. Dates are still awkward. But you're in high school. So they're legit.

Then there's an era filled with drama and friendship fallouts and absolute disasters (sophomore year). Spring break tears apart your primary friendship, and all your other friends get awkward, and you have an identity crisis and worry that you'll spend the rest of your high school career floating between social groups, drifting, without friends, and with no weekend plans forever. This phase passes.

The next phase, (junior year) so far, is kind of like the first. You have to recover from the wreckage of the drama, but when the smoke clears, the friends remaining are the most bomb ass friends you could ever picture yourself having, and you have grown into a more tolerant, mature person that resolves the same issues as the previous phase, but with a text message, a short talk, or letting each other cool off, instead of yelling and crying. 

(I'm not really sure what senior year will be like as a "phase," but junior year has been the most mature and nice of the three so far.) 

Everyone is busy and we all coexist nicely. We tick each other off sometimes, but we have separate interests and issues and we spend a lot more time helping each other out. We're becoming individuals, and junior year becomes a time for discovering ourselves. I guess senior year is the decision making year. (pick a school / major / career pathway) It's interesting to see each other grow and change and truly become young adults. 

My advice to anyone entering that fateful sophomore year is that it will be okay. The friends we make in high school aren't necessarily the friends we have in college. They could be, but nothing is forever, and that dumb fight over one person texting another person's crush, is actually trivial nonsense. Almost a year has gone by since that painful spring break trip, and any time someone brings up the Disney orchestra trip of spring, 2015, there's always a cause for laughter. Remember when everyone was sunburnt and we spent $15 on a tube of aloe vera for our hotel room? Remember when we gave each other the silent treatment on the 18 hour bus ride home? When we cried in the hotel hallway and thought we had made up our friendship but continued fighting? So glad that's behind us...

And it is. I know there's plenty of junior year still ahead of us, but here's to senior year. Junior year has been so awesome, and I've grown so much. Senior year is going to be full of wonderful lasts, and a lot of terrifying firsts, and I couldn't be more unprepared.

Yolo? (if that's still a hip thing that the kids say)

Claire