Don't Peak in High School

With another school year over, it can be a reflective time of year (especially if you’re graduating). You think back on all of the accomplishments, the letdowns, the highs and the lows.  It’s easy to feel a wide array of emotions as well – everything from relief to joy to pride, to sadness and disappointment and everything in between. It can be overwhelming.

What can make this transition time so difficult is the pressure – there are so many heightened expectations during the high school years to make the most of the supposedly best years of your life.

I think that this kind of pressurized, expectation-building thinking needs to stop. As someone who didn’t particularly enjoy high school, I remember leaving grade 12 wondering if I should have tried harder to have that indefinable “time of my life” that everyone always talked about.

That’s not to say that I didn’t have highs in secondary school, but there were lows, too.  High school was a memorable time in its own way, but it’s foolish to amp up that period of your life when you still have a lot of living ahead of you! Maybe I want my 30s, or my 40s, or even my 80s to be the best decades of my life – and they easily could be! Your happiness is not reserved for any single era of your life.

So…if you have finished another year of school or have graduated and are feeling confused or disappointed in any way – don’t let it get to you. Good things in life happen in every decade, not just when you’re young. The best times are yet to come!