What I Miss About High School (And What I Don’t)

There was a time when I hated everything about high school. I hated my uniform, I hated my hair, I hated the morons I was in classes with. I hated having to read really bad books and pretend that I cared about Geometry. I was just generally an unhappy person, and I took it out on high school. To say it was the root of all of my problems would be a lie made up by an unhappy girl with bad skin and bangs.

Later in my high school career, something clicked in me and I started to enjoy getting up (well, sort of) to go see my friends and my favorite teachers. I started liking the books I was reading and found the people I used to think were morons amusing. High school was what you made of it, and when I started wanting to enjoy it, I did. Now that I am in college, I miss the way my routine was set up less than a year ago.

Wearing a uniform, or dress code, is something that I miss. Picking out an outfit every morning is exhausting and stressful. Wearing jeans every day is uncomfortable and irritating. I miss wearing dresses and skirts and not having to squeeze into pants every morning.

I miss my classes of 20-something people. As much as I like being under the radar in my bigger lecture halls, I miss teachers knowing my name and feeling comfortable enough to answer a question without having 100+ people listening. I have classes in college with a small amount of people. Heck, I have classes that are half the size as ones that I had at my small high school. Those classes make me feel a little less on edge.

Being able to afford to miss a day of school is something that I miss. If I needed a mental health day, I could take one in high school. But now I feel guilty missing classes, no matter the situation. I had to skip a class last semester so I could catch a bus home for a long weekend. I felt awful for doing so and made up the class a couple days before I left. You pay for every single class and a lot of money, at that. It's painful to watch all of that money go down the drain just because you didn't go to class. It makes everything a little more stressful when you can't take those extra few hours to sort out your life. Sigh, I suppose that's what weekends are for.

I miss playing sports. I miss the bond between my soccer team and tanning at softball practice instead of listening to coach. I miss the feeling of winning and the amusement I got out of having completely defeated seasons.

At the same time, I don't miss gym class and frockey. I don't miss eating the same thing for lunch every day and having to deal with the lack of heat in the school when it felt like winter for a majority of the year. As much fun as I had making jokes about my softball team, I do not miss losing every game and putting all of the blame on myself. I don't miss my nails breaking every time I pitched a ball. I don't miss the leaky ceilings or religion classes. And I most certainly do not miss the girl I was at the beginning of high school.