Every day was beginning to feel the same. I would wake up at 6:45 a.m., drive to school, sit through six hours of classes, come to Howler after school, change quickly for basketball practice, eat dinner, shower and cram seven classes of homework into just a few hours. While I loved everything I had put on my plate, I could feel the burnout coming. It was tough knowing that just when I had finished, I had to wake up the next day and do it all over again. 

The schedule I described above had been going strong until the notorious March 13, 2020 (need I say more?). Suddenly, it all came to a halt. I was not waking up early, walking to classes or running around for my extracurriculars. Online school felt so optional that I started to relax. I had gone from having almost every minute of my day booked to struggling to find something to do with all of the free time on my hands. I thought I would like it better, but I didn’t. 

While I kept in touch with my group of close friends, one thing I particularly missed was all of the acquaintances I had met in my classes over the years. That’s where I made a majority of my high school memories, and all of a sudden, I could no longer see those people. Even though I dreaded waking up for school some days, in those early months of quarantine I would have given anything to go back to school and see some of the people I had lost touch with.

Sure the school events in my 2.5 years of traditional high school were fun, but I realized the thing I would miss most was the daily routine of just going to school: chatting with friends before class, saying hi to people in my classes, watching Netflix in Howler seventh period instead of getting work done and walking back to our cars with my teammates after practice. It all seemed so insignificant at the time, but the saying that your four years of high school do not come back is absolutely correct. 

If I were to give one piece of advice to my underclassmen, I’d say not to hesitate or wait. Nothing is guaranteed. So go to that dance. Say hi to someone new. Sign up for that club. Do whatever it is that you’ve been dying to give a try. That way, when you look back on your four years of high school, you will have no regrets.

been dying to give a try. That way, when you look back on your four years of high school, you won’t have any regrets.