When I first started high school I had one thing in mind, I was going to be number one in my class and go to Yale–end of story. I was going to get all A’s. I was going to participate in every single club that I could. I was going to take all the honors classes. I was going to only focus on school. Quickly, I learned that was the most unrealistic thing my 15 year old self could have ever came up with.

To say the least, I struggled. I was clearly not number one in my class. I was mostly a B student. I participated in one club and took a whopping number of one honors class. And believe me, school was not always my number one priority.

If anyone really knows me they know that I am the most stressed out, high strung, crybaby on the planet so while trying to keep up with everyone in my grade I became kind of an awful person to be around. I was easily discouraged and never shared my grades with anyone. I was disappointed in myself for not being as smart as the friends around me and was constantly comparing myself to them.

With the start of Junior year, I finally snapped out of my phase of trying to please everybody else and worked to please myself. Surprisingly, I stopped making school the most important thing in my life. I joined the cross country team, where I met some of my best friends and learned what hard work truly was.

Was I an all star? No absolutely not, I’lI admit I was pretty awful, but I found something that made me happy. I started my first year on the Bucs’ Blade staff, where I formed a second family, where the dingy couch in the room became my second bed and where I decided I was going to study journalism. I reached the highest stress levels of my life in that room all while crying because a page got deleted or because of the most recent thing that was being put on the quote wall joining these groups affected me in the most amazing way possible.

They made me happy.

I finally realized that was all that truly mattered to me in high school. Not getting perfect grades, being apart of NHS, or getting a 36 on my ACT. But being truly and completely happy. By joining cross country and Blade I was able to find out who I really was instead of trying to be like everyone else.

If there was one piece of advice I could give to all of the students about high school, it would be to have fun and be happy. You don’t have to be number one in the class, get all A’s and go to Yale to be happy. All you need is to find something that you care about and go after it.

You never know, it could be the one thing you chose to do for the rest of your life.