People always say that the high school years are the best days of your life. I graduate from high school today. I have two dominant thoughts about this:
1) Holy shit, I’m basically an orthopedic-shoe-wearing, online-dating-profile-making adult.
2) If those were the best days of my life, the rest of my life is going to suck SO hard.
I know a lot of you probably loved your high school experiences. For four years you get to live “young and wild and free” (unless you have really strict parents or are a 30 year old trying to obtain your GED for the 12th time). If you’re a girl you can generally pull of midriff-baring shirts and if you’re a guy the majority of your hair is still on your head instead of on your back and that’s something that should be cherished for as long as possible. But I can’t be the only one who found that despite some of the great memories that we gather in high school, it’s a pretty fucking awkward four years. Don’t get me wrong, it had its moments, but for me 90% of them were super embarrassing. It all started in grade nine…
Grade 9
No matter who you are, you were probably not at your prime in grade nine. Even if for some unfair reason you somehow managed to be both charismatic and abnormally attractive at the tender age of 14/15, you were still a grade nine, and no one carries that label gracefully. I for one was the epitome of all things that make grade nine such a bad year. In addition to the fact that I looked like pre-weightloss Jonah Hill in a wig (as you may have heard me mention before), I had glasses and braces and thought that buying brown yoga pants and trying to bring back mood rings couldn’t possibly be bad ideas. Oh, how wrong I was. Every time I see a picture of myself in grade nine, I just want to send a message through the time-space continuum begging my young self to stop wearing Birkenstocks with sweatpants and to take a damn shower for once. In addition to all of that aesthetic misfortune, I also had an irrational, crippling fear of grade twelves. I think it might have stemmed from watching too many bad 90s sitcoms, but I was convinced that at any given time a group of Regina George lookalikes would stuff me into a locker, laugh maniacally, and leave me there to suffocate. I would be left there all day until after hearing my sobs, a friendly janitor would come and rescue me. Naturally we would become the best of friends and I would teach him to read and eventually inspire him to acquire his high school diploma and go on to lead a wildly successful life, but this would all be at the cost of me being shoved forcefully into a locker. I know that sounds far-fetched, but I was SO convinced it was going to happen. I vividly remember walking into the girls’ washroom during my first week of school and seeing three grade twelve girls grooming themselves at the mirror, causing me to let out a squeak of fear and haul ass out of there. I cut down my water intake for a solid 2 months after that simply to avoid any similar encounters. Over time I came to terms with the fact that my underwear wasn’t going to be confiscated and hung on the flagpole and actually became comfortable with my surroundings. However, this wasn’t necessarily a good thing. On to grade 10…
Grade 10
I like to refer to grade 10 as “The Body-Spray Year”. Why, you ask? Go into any hall that houses at least five grade tens in between glasses and take a nice, deep breath. You taste that? A nice combination of musk and vanilla that makes you both gag and choke simultaneously? That, my friend, is body spray. I don’t know what it is about grade tens, but they go NUTS for that shit. I clearly remember investing in something that was supposed to smell like cake (because of course a hefty 15 year old would want to smell like cake) and basically bathing in it every day. And I wasn’t the only one. People kept what resembled entire pharmacy perfume aisles in their lockers. Not just girls either, but guys too. After finally discovering deodorant after smelling like onions left out in the sun for all of grade 9 (Seriously grade 9 boys, personal hygiene. Learn it. Love it. Embrace it.), many of them decide that if making themselves stop smelling like a sweaty donkey is good, walking around in a cloud of cologne must be WAY better. Of course by cologne, I mean Axe. Fun fact for all of you guys out there: The Axe commercials lie. Using an entire bottle of Axe body spray over the course of an hour does not make me want to rip off my clothes around you. It just makes my allergies flare up and I get all sneezey and my eyes puff up and that really doesn’t get me in the mood. The other main component of grade 10 is the immense self-esteem boost that comes from no longer being a grade 9. In some cases grade 10s manage to remain humble, and big ups to them. But a lot of the time, grade 10s end up thinking they are, pardon my outdated slang, “the bomb diggity”. They strut around the halls in small packs, wafts of body spray trailing behind them, rocking their short-and-Uggs combos (or pants around knees ensembles in the case of guys) like the swagnificent individuals they are. It wouldn’t be a big deal in most cases but sometimes it just gets a little out of hand. On more than one occasion I’ve been hurrying along to class only to run into a large group of grade 10s walking down the hall in a horizontal formation that resembles a game of Red Rover. There’s literally NO way to get around them, so I generally just mumble a gruff comment and force my way through with my backpack. I’m pretty sure a lot of them think I’m a huge bitch for this, but I really just want to get to class five minutes late instead of ten. I have standards you know! By the end of the year, grade 10s generally get taken down a few pegs from being knocked over while holding hands with their friends across the hall or having someone yell “OH MY GOD STOP WITH THE PERFUME I HAVE FUCKING ASTHMA” at them. But a word of advice for next year’s grade 10s: You ain’t the shit if you smell like it. On to grade 11.
Grade 11
I like to think of grade 11 as the token hipster of the high school years. It’s a year of self-discovery; since you’re no longer a junior, you’re free to do your own thing and get judged slightly less for it than you would have in the past. I for one expressed my individuality by purchasing way too many ironic graphic tees from the men’s department at Urban Outfitters and experimenting with a middle part. I’m pretty sure the combination resulted in me bearing a slight resemblance to Rosie O’Donnell, but that’s beside the point. I was also really set on getting a blue streak in my hair throughout the entire year, but for some reason didn’t end up getting it until the beginning of grade 12. I know I’m delving into another grade here, but since my blue hair mishap was a reflection of the grade 11 I still was at heart I feel I should mention the sheer sense of rebellion I felt upon getting it and how quickly that feeling died once people started making jokes about me looking like Avril Lavigne. Thanks for crushing my spirit, guys. Anyways, grade 11 is the year people are most likely to invest in a high quality Nikon or Canon camera and to take artsy pictures with it in a field and upload them to Facebook in an album with a clever title. I have an entire folder on my computer comprised solely of badly taken pictures of flowers and tree bark that testify to this fact. Above all, grade 11 is characterised by starting to figure out what you want to do with your life. There’s a good chance you’ll toy with the idea of at least 14 different careers throughout the course of the year, and by the end of it the only conclusion you’ll draw is that you want to make a lot of money or that you want to marry rich. And that’s totally okay! As of today I’m not even in high school anymore and that’s still the only conclusion I’ve drawn. But then again, I know I’m destined to marry someone famous so I’m not too worried about supporting myself financially and might not be the best person to take advice from. Anyways, there’s probably more I could say about grade 11, but it’s kind of underground. You’ve probably never heard of it before. (That was a hipster joke. Just in case you were wondering.) So, uh, grade 12?
Grade 12
Grade 12 is somehow both the most intense and the laziest year I have ever experienced. The entire first semester is one giant whirlwind of university applications and stress-induced acne, while the second can be accurately summed up by the simple sentence “zero fucks given.” When grade 12 starts, you actually have to put down on paper what you want to do once you graduate and apparently becoming a princess or a superhero isn’t a legitimate answer. And that’s all sorts of terrifying. Things that used to matter start seeming dumb, looking good for example. Once you hit grade 12, formfitting clothing seems like a sick joke to you and sweatpants and hoodies become your very best friends, regardless of the weather. I can’t even tell you how many times I contemplated buying a Snuggie and wearing it to school with some sort of belt in the hope that I could pass it off as a stylish oversized dress. After you get all your post-secondary plans in order, however, the senioritis kicks in HARD. It becomes physically impossible to do anything productive and you find yourself using stupid catchphrases like “#YOLO” on a regular basis in order to justify your inaction. Actually that might just be Drake… I’m not sure, I’m not very hip. Anyways, by the end of the year you basically feel like you’ve already graduated and going to school 5 out of 7 days a week just isn’t a realistic goal when you could stay home and sleep instead. And exams? LOL, that’s a good one! I have the utmost respect for anyone who actually manages to study for second semester exams in grade 12. It’s just not doable. I napped and ate for a week straight when I should have been studying for exams and I’m totally okay with that (#YOLO?), and I know a lot of other people did the same. When there’s bigger and brighter things on the horizon like a summer of sleep, moving out and heading to uni it’s impossible to focus on silly little high school.
...Okay, I might have lied about that last part. Now that I’m officially leaving high school, I’m finding it way too easy to focus on it. The past four years have absolutely flown by. I feel like just yesterday I was hiding from grade twelves in my ugly brown pants and meeting some of my best friends for the first time. As awkward and embarrassing as some of my experiences were, I’ll always remember every single one of them fondly. And I hope it’s the same case for anyone else who’s graduating, even the people who I resent for going through grade nine gracefully. And you know what? Even if those were the best years of my life, maybe the rest of it won't suck THAT hard. Anyways, this got emotional real fast so I’m just going to go practice walking in my commencement shoes even though I’ll probably trip on stage either way. But before I go, here’s a profound song about graduating that seems quite fitting today. Haha, just kidding! It’s that one song by Vitamin C. Happy graduation everyone! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HDM3eYp4KQ
