Editor's note: This essay is the fourth and final in a series of essays about how local students are preparing for their futures and finding challenges and joys along the way. . Learn more about these students, read all their essays, and stay up to date at st.news/studentvoices2024.
I have always valued friendships in my life, and I cannot name anything more important to my development than friends. During my senior year of high school, when things were often uncertain and scary, I realized that the teenage girls around me did more for me than I could do for myself or what most adults could do for me. Provided navigation. We use conversation as a way to express love. By doing so, you can turn a hopeless, frustrating moment into something less heart-wrenching.
I've gotten through this past year and helped my friends get through life by talking, venting, and crying. Now, as I watch them receive their college acceptance letters, I feel a similar feeling of pride that my mother would experience. These friendships have been helpful beyond words, telling them I'm proud of them because they need to hear it, comforting them because there's no one else like it, reading them bedtime stories. , and helped her with her math homework.
Those experiences gave me a strong foundation. They made me experience the joy of having friends I can rely on and the responsibility of being relied upon. When I think about the joys and responsibilities of friendship, I think of my best friend Indigo. She supports me in every way and is a caring and funny person. No matter where I am, she will be standing there with me. All my friends would do that.
I see a side of my friends that my parents, boyfriend, and teachers don't see. I see them at their lowest, where I support and justify them. Such moments are everywhere in a teen's life. When you feel like your life is over. School feels like a killer, and applying to college feels like an impending disappointment. And your parents don't really understand. But I also get to see my friends at their best, the moments when their cheeks hurt from laughing so hard, and when the stress of adulthood feels like years away.
My parents drilled into me that I could do anything I wanted, that I could do anything I wanted, and that concept was something I really had to learn on my own. When I was a student, I felt inferior because I didn't want to become a doctor or lawyer, or because I wasn't trying to change the world. Most of the time I felt like I wasn't aiming high enough. I could have joined a club, cared more about the test, or canceled my friend's studies, but I didn't. I can't say I regret it either.
The fourth year is the most mentally taxing year of high school. These days, I feel much less frustrated and hopeless. I repeated it hundreds of times in my head. “Just make it in time for graduation.” That being said, I will someday wish there were more of these moments that I take for granted, even the ones I wish would go away.
I'm not the perfect student, I've never gotten straight A's, and I often struggle to find motivation. But the past year has proven that none of these things speak to my worth or intelligence.
I always thought people could see my potential the same way I did. But then I had a teacher who took my grades at face value, and I quickly had to learn to live with being viewed differently than how I felt. For me, this meant that I needed to have an unwavering sense of security within myself. Having total confidence in my friend's ability to succeed revealed the pointlessness of holding back from having confidence in my own abilities. My friends gave me the guidance I needed to have complete confidence in myself, regardless of my GPA or acceptance letter.
It's hard to convey how confident you are about your future or explain the ambition that drives you to succeed. That's mainly because I only have a vague idea of ​​what I'll be like in a year.
I'm a person who loves the familiar. I mean, moving from Seattle, going to college, and making new friends is scary. But that's no longer the case. That's what has changed over the past year. I know myself incredibly well. I know how to push myself, what I want to learn, who I want to be with, and when to give myself a break.
Being on the precipice of change involves a lot of instability, but these friendships work as a deal. You will be my pillar, and I will be your pillar.