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Ring, ring. The final bell echoes through WHHS as hundreds of exhausted students come toppling out of classrooms, relieved to be free — at least, for now.
When the bells ring at the end of the day, and you are released from the building, the mindset of cliques, constant comparison and a strict social hierarchy never leaves.
You may be free from the physical walls, but its ghost lingers in the shadows, never quite releasing you from the shackles of insecurity and unsolicited advice from the memories of your teenage self.
While Hollywood teen movies are cliché and comically overdramatic, there is some truth to them.
We once viewed these high school comedies as exaggerated and unrealistic. Now they read as an uncanny, surprisingly accurate distortion of what it’s like to be a high schooler in this day and age. The only difference is that in real life, it never ends. The characters gradually get older, but they never really grow up.
The drama pivots from crude Snapchat stories to email chains, lockers become cubicles and the mean girls never really leave; they just get better at passive aggression.
Like in movies, high school often revolves around distinct social groups — the jocks, the sci-fi geeks, the tortured artists, the nerds. Each one is more desperate than the last to convince themselves they matter in ways that are insignificant but somehow define their identity.
Much like high school, adulthood regurgitates this inextinguishable need to reorganize and alienate ourselves into the same categories, only this time it is gilded with LinkedIn endorsements and a vague sense of superiority.
The same hierarchies that are imprinted on our minds at 16 quietly follow us through life. These relentless spirits, having the same eerily suspicious similarity to the ones that followed you through every cringe-worthy thing you have ever done, remain — forever haunting the halls of our high schools and homes alike.
At some point, time freezes at 16, the age where everything seems like the end of the world.
Suddenly, all the emotional and social evolution we spent years pretending to understand halts to a stop, paving the way to an early adulthood filled with chaos, turbulent relationships and all the nonsense prevalent in those 2000s coming-of-age movies we pretend not to enjoy, where the protagonist struggles to find themselves when faced with a new reality.
In the end, we all become carbon copies of our shallow, fragile teenage selves we spend years trying to forget, but the memories and lessons learned at that age are too valuable to suppress.
Over time, our textbooks are replaced with mortgage payments, and we trade our hallway crushes for irrepressible fears of not finding a suitable mate and dying alone.
While I am aware this unfortunate, seemingly pessimistic view on what can only be classified as a never-ending social experiment appears to be a bit extreme, it is the uncomfortable reality of what lies beyond the confining walls of the teen purgatory known as high school.
So next time you are stressed about an assignment due at 11:59 p.m. or finding a date to prom, just know it’s only going to get worse from here.
Reassuring, I know.
If that sounds frightening to you, I get it. Just remember, if you can survive high school, you can survive anything.