At the start of this school year, I finally understood and saw what people meant when they said, “High school goes by fast; it’ll be over before you know it.” Watching the freshman roam around with...

High school is where students discover who they are. It’s where they decide what direction they want to go and who they want to be, stumbling through different obstacles to get there. From being scared to ask your crush to a dance, to failing a history test because you stayed up late watching Netflix instead of studying, to having a nervous breakdown in the middle of nowhere because assignments just keep piling one after the other, high school helps prepare students for adversity. Though many people think high school is the worst thing ever, there are many positives, like meeting people who you may spend the rest of your life with, making friendships that will stay very close to your heart, and creating memories that you will cherish forever. The four years of high school are some of the best years our our lives. Even though it may not seem like it now, you will realize it once it all starts to come to an end. Every year has its lows, but it’s up to you to make the best of every situation. here are some tips on how to do that.

A mother: a woman who loves unconditionally, putting her child’s needs before her own. In high school, most girls don’t understand that kind of love or selfishness.

If one thing is certain, it’s that there needs to be a instruction manual for incoming high-school freshman - how to do this, when to do that, what’s important and what’s not going to matter in ten years - because we all know that it would save everyone a whole lot of time and effort. Unfortunately though, there isn’t. Kids are left to learn manual-worthy lessons on their own; some lessons are learned by experience, some by association, and some simply by observance. Over the course of four years, high school can fill that theoretical manual pretty full, but perhaps the most important lesson one could learn from that manual may not be realized until late in the high-school career, or even afterward: to not let high school be the center of the universe.