Getting Through My Senior Year of High School

In this piece, I talk about all of my experiences during my last year of high school, and some advice I have for getting through this stage of life.

The first three years of high school for me were relatively uneventful and involve experiences I will not be outlining in this article. Nevertheless, they transformed my adolescence and being able to reflect on those years has given me immense value. 

To begin, we all know the routine of a high school student: waking up early, getting things ready, and attending seven-hour long days. This routine is almost the same each day and can feel extraordinarily draining and utterly exhausting at times. It’s comparable to a full-time adult job. And for me, I experienced my last year of high school online—with the exception of about twenty in-person days, possibly less. Having to go through that same routine while being forced to spend my day on my computer was very difficult for me, and on many days I lacked motivation. May of 2020 was not exactly a great place in my life, two months after the world pandemic began.

In October of 2020, things had certainly gotten a lot better for me, in terms of my outlook on life. I was on the girls’ varsity swim team, so every day after virtual learning, I swam for about two hours, and that allowed me to feel a sense of freedom, looking back on it now. Being cramped in my room all day was a feeling that became forgotten once I jumped in the water and got to stretch out my arms and legs, letting all of my problems slightly melt away. However, that swim season eventually ended, and even though I was sad to say goodbye to it and the wonderful girls I met on the team, I knew I would move on and take care of myself in other ways. I had also lost my passion for the sport, so it was finally time for it to end. 

And sure enough, the months went on. Most days were slow, yet all of them slowly lumped together. 

Listening to my teachers and fellow students on the other end of Google Meet or Zoom while I heard the gentle hum of my ceiling fan was just enough to make me want to sleep and not wake up until the year was over. While everything that happened because of a worldwide pandemic (gross) is not any single person’s fault, the way that things did happen could have definitely been done better. I mean no harm by saying this, but when I say that I was forced to relentlessly endure uninspiring class lessons with topics that were even more uninspiring, it is hard to even imagine what it was like if you didn’t experience it yourself. Waking up at seven-thirty in the morning when school started at that time was comparable to the feeling a young child who is grounded might feel when they wake up and don’t have any toys to play with. For me, I was waking up without getting to see my friends and teachers and engaging in the nuances of daily high school life.

In January of 2021, I spent two weeks in Minnesota with my grandparents which were very great for me since it was a change of scenery and I was allowed to see my cousins and family, go out in the snow, and watch movies with my grandma and sister on Friday nights. The bonding we were able to experience after months of isolation was a blessing from God himself. We even went out for pizza one night—a simple thing that felt incredibly exciting given the circumstances the pandemic and virtual learning put my life in. I did go home at last, and I was back to my same routine again, and all of it was fine. My break from the endless routine at home was good enough, at the time. I couldn’t do much to change my environment, all I could do was change my mindset—which is profoundly harder than you can even imagine.

Not only did I have to sit through a seven-hour day in front of my computer, but I had additional homework to complete after those seven hours, which rounded out my day of school to last anywhere between nine to twelve painful hours. Sure, every student is different and takes certain amounts of time to complete their work, but I was one of the students who needed to take her time and be very precise. By the time March came around, I actually took a trip to Florida with my grandparents for a week which was incredible and I felt very blessed to be able to travel after being stuck inside my room for such a long time. It was even more fulfilling than going to Minnesota in January, if you can believe that. But even on that trip, I was stuck in front of my screen for the same amount of time. The only semblance of relief I had was being able to go out swimming, shopping at the mall, or watching movies with my grandma and grandpa.

Despite the hardship it was, it is possible that my trip to Florida is what helped get me through the year—otherwise, I don’t know how life would have felt without that much-needed breath of fresh, warm air in another state. I remember going out on the patio and sitting with my sister doing homework at night as a chilly, yet perfectly comfortable breeze danced through the sky. However, if you think my entire year was horrible, you’re wrong. Getting through high school is very hard, and I made that clear, so I realized very early on that I had to make myself motivated in ways outside of my education that got me through such a lonely, abysmal year. A passion that I took up starting in October was writing, and words will never come close to expressing how much it has changed my life. Writing has allowed me to formulate ideas I never thought someone like me could articulate. It has given me so much joy, passion, and a way to mentally ground myself while still sharing my life stories with the world. 

Every day, I wrote when I finally finished my homework. It never felt like a chore, just like writing this blog post doesn't feel like a chore. Writing about imaginative scenarios, journaling out my feelings, and even expressing myself through poetry are the only things that got me out of bed—not doing the insignificant schoolwork that I’m never going to remember. It was something I chose for myself that improved my mindset so beautifully. After I discovered this passion of mine, I made time for myself in other areas of life. Once May and June came around, I began going on walks outside after school and that was greatly enjoyable since it relieved a lot of my stress and powerful emotions I felt about losing my senior year. 

All in all, my time in high school was very memorable and I have definitely grown as a person in comparison to where I was four years ago today. Despite what 2020 brought to us all, I had so many beautiful experiences and interactions with people from my high school that I feel deeply grateful for. Without those experiences, both positive and negative, I learned so much about myself and that I can get through difficult moments. I strongly encourage anyone reading this who is still going through high school to never forget that life is short, and the little moments are not so little. Yet at the same time, it is just high school. 

You will certainly have beautiful memories there, but I didn’t start fully start becoming the best version of myself until after I graduated. I am still going to become everything I wish to be, in time. I have taken all of my experiences—positive and negative—and used them to my advantage. Now, I am in college. It has been nothing short of incredible. 

And college so far? I have so many beautiful things to say. For now, that is an essay for another time. 

Thank you for taking the time to read about my experience of getting through high school. ☽

—Essay by Samantha Fuchsgruber

Date // 13. November 2021

@LockheartArdenPublishing