Where has the last day of school gone? From kindergarten to sixth grade I spent every last week of school cleaning out cubbies, washing paintbrushes, eating candy and watching Disney movies. I spent my last week of school with a chemistry lab practical, an English essay project, a Spanish website design assignment, a research paper for AP US History and I was busy studying for a math final. I considered myself lucky this year; I only had one final while all my friends struggled with four or five final exams.
My last day of classes fell on the second to last Thursday of May this year and it was an anticlimactic day that began with a big cup of coffee and ended with a frantic trigonometry review session. I went home, fell asleep for a couple of hours, woke up and worked on a research paper. On previous last days of school over the past ten years, I attended beach parties and sleepovers and campouts once the final bell rang. How I reminisce for the exalting liberty of youth.
I think all high school students can agree that we too deserve pizza parties and arts and crafts time for our end of school festivities. We deserve slip ‘n slides and bouncy castles and ice cream trucks galore, but I don’t think any of us can relax for an extended period of time when we still have exams coming up.
Our parents just don’t understand. High school is not what it used to be. Our parents just did not feel the same magnitude of stress we struggle with everyday. Fear not, all of their unused stress goes toward our schoolwork. My mother had more anxiety dreams about my final exams than I did, my father started researching colleges for me in the 8th grade while I’m still grappling with logarithms and Hemingway as my parents freaked out around me.
Maybe our parents are jumping at the chance to be stressed out about SATs and college applications for once in their lives. On one hand, I want to strangle them. I’m an independent young student! I can handle it! But on the other hand, my parents always seem to remember those little details and deadlines I would never even think about. A double-edged sword…
School is an uphill battle for all of us, including our parents. We may not have a last day of school party anymore but we do have double the freedom that we had as third graders; free periods, driving, off campus privileges, no bedtime. And so we say farewell to yearbook signing pizza parties and welcome all nighters and highlighter stains on our bed sheets as we progress towards, wait for it, college, or even, oh God, ADULTHOOD (insert gasp here).
