Fix Insider's Guide to High School Perspective

First Day Of High School Isn’t Doomsday

 

By Tae
Hyun Yoon
Junior
Reporter
SEOUL,
South Korea – I recall that Mary Ann Evans, the famed English writer better
known as George Eliot, once said, “Adventure is not outside man; it is within.”
This
quote fits quite well to my current situation, as I approach my
much-anticipated first day of high school. Therefore, I am happy to believe
that high school will just be another one of the many adventures I will have in
life, and that everything will go perfectly.
Let me
rephrase that: I am trying to believe
that everything will go perfectly.
As I
await that fateful “Day of Judgment,” my heart never ceases to pound furiously
as if I were about to bungee-jump off the Empire State Building.
High
school. That dreaded epoch of sleepless nights and endless piles of work. That
moment when a healthy young boy magically starts to grow gray and white hairs
on his once-robust scalp. Although high school has been idolized as a period of
“fun” and “partying,” any serious student will look through these false
depictions at once. And so it is that I find it impossible to relax during the
few days I have before “Doomsday.”
But
enough with the hyperboles – the main reason most kids find high school
menacing is not because of the workload involved. It’s more related to getting
one’s independence tested out on the playing field for the first time.
Tae Hyun Yoon
In high
school, more is expected from you than ever before, and the stakes are high,
especially for kids that want to go to Ivy League colleges later on in life. 
So
in order to cope with the kind of difficulties that high school life presents,
one must learn to discover how to be independent and be able to handle
challenges by one’s own means. The time for depending on mommy and daddy to do
everything is over.
In this
sense, high school is a kind of entrance exam to society – only with a pass or
fail grade.
As with
many of my peers, I am starting to doubt my ability to be independent enough to
succeed in high school in the few days I have left before D-Day. Of course, I
don’t want to admit it to anybody else, but the fear is present, and I can’t
deny it.
High
school represents the arrival of my freedom, which is something I’ve wanted my
whole life. But on the other hand, it represents a whole new variety of hurdles
that I have to jump over, a whole new set of problems to solve. Even now, it’s
my job to handle all of the concerns I have the best I can and appear strong on
the outside, and I can’t expect anybody else to do it for me.
Come to
think of it, though, I’m ignoring a lot of the benefits that high school
presents to me.  I will be able to
encounter an entirely new community of people with unrivaled diversity. My
opportunities are more limitless than ever, as I will be able to choose from a
broad selection of courses that just keeps on growing as I move on.
The
things I learn in high school will stay with me forever, and I expect that the
diversity of the individuals that I will meet will help me discover both new
things about the world and myself in general.
I’m a
businessman in the early days of the Industrial Revolution – able to pick and
choose from a list of thousands of opportunities. The risks run high. But the
possibilities are immense, and the lure of uncertainty is stronger than
ever. 
Oh look,
I’m relaxing a bit already. It seems that high school isn’t so bad at all – the
place is a gold mine for opportunities. And I guess that I don’t need to worry
about my independence anyway, because I have four long years to prepare myself
for the famed horrors of society.
Even
then, I have college and grad school to go to, which makes a total of about 10
or 11 years. Now that’s a lot. So I guess it’s a good time for me to get a
small taste of the world and its mysteries, because after all, it can’t be too
bad, can it?