Before experiencing high school, I thought it sounded pretty cool. Everyone said it’d be the best four years of my life. If that’s true, then I’m terrified for the future. 

Don’t get me wrong: I had some good times. Still, to be completely transparent, I can’t wait to be done with it. I’m tired of always being tired. I understand that I’ll likely be tired the rest of my life, but I’m over being tired due  to assignments that are just a means to an end.

I can’t remember any assignments or the concepts they taught from before Christmas break. I often ask myself the same question that no teacher I’ve ever interrogated has been able to answer: Why?

Why do I need to understand every sentence of “Hamlet” when most of the words aren’t in the modern vernacular? Why do I need to understand every tactical detail of the Battle of Lake Erie? Why do I need to know how to calculate the mass of a basketball based on its dimensions? Why? 

Why am I being metaphorically crushed by seven classes of irrelevant information? In one day, I could be tested in all my classes and expected to know approximately 70% of the information relayed to me over the past two weeks. 

Scratch that: at Hoban, 70% won’t even cut it. In order to earn a C-, a 74% is required. As a college-prep school, shouldn’t this institution run as similarly to college as possible? Shouldn’t all high schools?

Shouldn’t we use the typical 10-point scale? Shouldn’t students have a spaced-out schedule with more challenging classes? There are no college students taking seven courses a day, five days a week, with one 25-minute lunch period to break up the monotony. 

So, to the general institution of high school, let me echo my previous question: “Why?”

Beyond the poor structure, I’m done with the social atmosphere. Every day, there’s a new piece of meat on which the lions pounce. Whether it’s what happened after the basketball game, what happened in the parking lot before school or what (or who) happened to who’s neck, I’m sick of it.

No, I don’t care about the 22-year-old boyfriend you met on Tinder. No, I don’t care about how messed up that girl’s racoon-looking spray tan is. No, I don’t care about the muffin top that one girl was rocking at the football game. And, if I haven’t made myself entirely clear, no, I don’t care about the awful party that the most obnoxious people in the school threw this past weekend. 

The petty drama that chews up and spits out every student that has ever walked through these halls can take a lap. It just doesn’t matter. In a week to 10 days, not only will I have forgotten almost all of “Hamlet,” but I’ll have forgotten any little drop of tea spilt into the hall of any American high school.

In those same halls, having fun—causing no harm to self or others—appears to be off limits, but more egregious crimes often go unpunished.  Let’s unpack this. Vaping in the gravel lot is ok, but throwing a football in the empty gravel lot is not. Yelling obscenities at a basketball game is ok, but bringing a mannequin arm to a basketball game is not. Throwing food across the lunchroom is ok, but throwing away instead of recycling a water bottle is not. Being on your phone during all school mass is ok, but forgetting to wear a polo is not. 

Get it? Got it? Good. 

Maybe this entire rant has been a bummer. Maybe you’re questioning your decision to grow up. I promise that high school isn’t entirely bad. 

Along the way, you’ll make some of the greatest buddies in the whole world; you’ll meet a girl or a boy who makes you happier than you’ve ever been; you’ll find a pair of shoes that completes every uniformed look. High school hasn’t been the best four years of my life, but it has been plenty cool.