Real Talk - So this was high school

So this was High School.

This is it.

The end.

This is what we have been waiting for.


I sat down to write about high school. The words came but they all came out brown and bitter, probably because that's all school was to me then. Sophomore year was a dark one.

I sat down to write about high school again, as a Junior and the words came but differently this time. It was hard. I still hated it. Darkness and disgust still dripped from my fingers and stained the page as I wrote but I was humming a different tune. Because even though School was still trying to kill me, I found something else there. Or rather it found me. Something bright. I tried to push it aside because I was too busy fighting with School to pay attention to it. But it kept coming back. And soon I realized that it was fighting School with me. So in an act of further rebellion against School, I embraced it. Not it. Them. My class, my posse, my friends, my gang, my peeps, my nerds, my jocks, my cheerleaders, my artists, my musicians, my geeks, my freaks, my dancers, my lifters, my stoners, my shredders, hipsters, tall, short, rich, poor, all of them. My friends. They were all fighting the same fight as me.


Now here I am. Sitting down again to write about High School. Perhaps for the last time.
And in hindsight I can see it all. School was a mask. Underneath all of the layers of geometry, synonyms, history and gravitation equations was the heart of Lone Peak. Underneath the mask I found the purpose of high school.

Doorsteps, dance parties, proms, preferences, friends, best friends, boyfriends, girlfriends and let's-just-be-friends, birthday parties, slumber parties, all night parties, just-cause parties, camp outs, peel outs, In-N-Out's, burgers, pizza with friends, hot dogs at games, root beer pong, ping pong and sting pong, ball games, screaming to the radio with the windows down, cruising down the road as our hearts beat to the music of high school.

To the students of Lone Peak: It's not the structure of the school, not the number of gyms or the quality of programs offered that makes our school World Class. It's the Class. It's the student body. It's all of you. And I just wanted to thank the students of Lone Peak for accepting me as an outsider. I love you.

The purpose of high school is not to fill our heads with polynomials and lit terms but to fill our hands with other hands, to fill our hearts with people we love, our memories with familiar faces and our eyes with the big, bright, beautiful future that awaits the imaginative.
And if you think for a second that high school is about earning a diploma then you've missed high school. 

Our high school musical is about to end.

And the time has come for the bass to drop and for us to dance as hard as we can to the familiar pulse of Lone Peak for two more weeks.

And then it's all over.

Then comes the part where we scatter in 900 different directions.

Maybe someday in the future I'll sit down to write about high school again. I won't remember what I learned in math. I won't remember my science teacher's name. But I will remember the golden days of high school and the people I spent them with.
I will remember you.

So this was high school.

A Thousand Miles in My Shoes

I've been told that to understand someone, I should take a walk in his shoes. But I don't even understand myself and I've been walking in my shoes for 18 years.

What is my purpose here?

What is my purpose for leaving?

Did I do what I was supposed to do in high school?

If I had just been there for them, would I have less friends who's lives are spinning out of control?

What would Lone Peak be without me?

What would I be without Lone Peak?

Will the only marks I leave be the scuffs and footprints my shoes left in the hallways?

A thousand kind hearted people have put in a thousand thoughtful miles in my tired old shoes.

And that's the mark Lone Peak left on me.