By Lily Galapon, Guest Contributor
It has been almost a month since becoming a junior at NCSSM. Over the course of four weeks, I adjusted to the unpredictable schedule of classes, with unfamiliar faces shifting into friends. To look back and feel as though the first week was ages ago registers as surreal.
Yet, I still remember the burning heat of the first Ice Cream Social, of learning and struggling to complete my first housekeeping task, and of feeling so overwhelmed. But for the first week, I was wrapped with positive affirmations by so many seniors that “it will all turn out okay” and the classic reassuring phrase, “You’ll get used to it.”
Enthusiasm flashed in the faces of seniors as they recounted the early days of their junior year, narrating their difficult experiences with newfound humor of the present. They backed up their experience by telling stories of the amazing friends they’d made over the years, of having fun at school clubs and performing at festivals. Every sentence of hardship they said was followed by, “I eventually got over it.”
“It,” to them, was now a small reference seniors made as they looked back in retrospect.
But to me, It is the overwhelming current of my reality, the pounding in my ears, the expanding hole in my stomach when trying to make sense of this new life. It means feeling unsure in almost every step, and hopelessly clinging onto the words of the students before you that everything will be fine.
The discomfort of being a junior needs to be talked about more–of feeling that you are doing everything wrong, of starting fresh and being so terrified about it. Of beginning a new high school journey and not knowing what to do with all the blank pages. The endless support from this community is something I appreciate; however, there needs to be more conversation about feeling lost. Of not glossing over the nuances when navigating junior year, but focusing on them.
When we talk about ourselves not in retrospect, but in the present, is when life becomes more real. Instead of discussing every time how adjusting to school life was “eventually solved,” why not expand the conversation to how we are “currently in progress?”
Life isn’t static–we’re constantly dealing with new problems, subtle moments emerging and revealing themselves every day.
To say that “at this moment, you don’t have everything figured out”–that’s what feels more reassuring. More relatable. Of maybe talking about how there are things we still haven’t fully adjusted to, or acknowledging that we are currently struggling with certain things.
When we open the door to feeling lost, that’s when we can begin to find our way into the world again.