School

School is either that awesome period of your life where you make a ton of friends who will stand by you your whole life, or it can become one of the loneliest places on the planet and can give you depression and anxiety. There is no in between. The grades and the classes you study are like the small print in the terms and conditions. The people around you and the emotions they ensue are what really affect you.

For some, secondary school, or high school for you American readers, is the best five or so years of your life. You're at the top of the food chain and smiling every day. You get invited to those huge parties and get asked out on dates by that guy or girl you've always liked. You make friends with awesome people with names to match and love the whole experience.

For others, like myself, school is worse than hell and you'd rather be taught in a prison cell. You find it hard to fit in and make new friends. You're too nervous around everyone else and continually make a fool of yourself due to nervousness. You watch as everyone else lets loose and wish you could, too. You run in the opposite direction so your crush never sees your face and every time they talk a warm blush overtakes your face.

There's this immediate in-group, out-group mentality that separates you from your peers. The thought of others judging you for how you behave. That fight or flight instinct every time you walk through those large doors. But school should not be like that. It should be a place of acceptance, knowledge, and warmth.

Those quiet people in the back of the classroom can make you laugh louder than you'd expect to and smile wider than the Red Sea.

The louder people can make your feel part of something that is bigger than you are. They voice the views you fear to tell others. They are your role models.

This can lead to peer pressure and conformity. And depending on circumstance, that is either really good or really bad. Peer pressure can cause you to drink alcohol and smoke and do drugs, which is not good for you in the long run. School kids need to understand that they are too young to decide to add those toxins into their bodies. They are not indestructible. Conformity can make you have group ideologies instead of personal preferences. It can make you judge those people who strive to be different purely for the fact that they're different. This makes the in-group, out-group mentality more evident and harder to expunge.

We all have the common hatred of school, though, the moments we feel sick at the thought of going in, and the minutes we count down at the beginning of the day, and those periods of utter confusion at what the hell we just heard. The tired seconds where your hands start to ache because you've been writing for so long.

School shouldn't be like that. But it is. So work through it as best as you can.

School does, however, teach you growth and acceptance, as well brain-hemorrhaging maths and mind-numbing chemistry.

There's also the laughter, the jokes, and the fun you have when you have a supply teacher. The glorious times you don't have to do a presentation in front of your peers. And most of all, the feeling of weightlessness when you get to go to break and lunch.

So, take my advice. Don't judge anyone from how they seem or look. Get to know them from inside and then choose to let them in. Be tolerant towards others, even if you feel that they do not deserve it. Because, like Bowling For Soup sang, "high school never ends." That's how life is gonna be until the day you die. So use your time wisely.