Dear Past Me,

You’re probably wondering how your experience in high school is going to go and if you’ll even be able to make it into college at all. Well, I’m going to give you some advice on what happens, and you’re going to need it.

Overall, the experience goes by really fast, and you should really treasure every moment of it, especially with what happened in the middle of junior year. You’ll find out that the senior experience that you thought you would have ended up being nothing like you thought, but you still managed to have some fun along the way. Now here’s some specific advice for your future.

Grades are depressing.

As you enter high school, you know that to get into a college (as well as to make your parents happy) you would have to get good grades. Somehow you actually accomplished this, with only one B in the second semester of AP Chemistry. On top of that, you’re actually going to be a salutatorian, something you never believed you would be able to do. Even so, these grades will cost you a big part of your high school experience: social events. You didn’t go to a single football game and barely attended any of the high school events, even though you will get more involved later on. Although, you did end up getting into a pretty good college, so I guess in some part it was worth it.

However, you should still take some time to go out more. It will definitely help with the stress you feel during junior year due to the SAT and AP exams. Instead of checking your PowerSchool portal every day, you should check in with your friends more often. High school goes by fast, and you should make the most of it.

Procrastination is not your friend.

You may think it is thanks to all of the extra time it gave you to play games, but it just causes more stress in the long run. You’ll end up having this problem for the entirety of your high school years, but you’ll learn to manage it somewhat. Eventually, you will join The Arcadia Quill in your senior year which will give you a taste of keeping up with deadlines as well as balancing procrastination. Hopefully you will stop procrastinating as a whole. 

The pandemic.

You don’t know it now, but in the middle of your junior year, everything will change. The world gets hit with a full blown pandemic, and you will no longer be able to see your friends in person. Although you will enjoy this at first, you will find out that only being able to communicate with your friends online is pretty difficult without the in person interaction. I would recommend going out and taking more walks while socializing to at least get out of the house, as you will be spending a lot more time on the computer. Along with that, make sure to spend more time with your family, as you will soon be going off to college, going extended periods of time without seeing them.

Overall, I believe that you will accomplish anything you set your mind to. Keep your head up; you got this.

Sean.