High School Life

“This is water” (Wallace 238). You wake up at 6 am to the default iPhone alarm that everyone has, the one you’re all too familiar with. You shower in too hot water, but you’re too tired to care. You put on the clothes you picked last night, and walk out the door. It’s too early to eat breakfast. Still half asleep, you drive to school, fighting the combined traffic from construction, adults going to work, and other teens going to school. Once you reach the student parking lot, you are met with other teens trying to park. Among you are a various array of oversized SUV’s, luxury cars, and beat up mini-vans. After being cut off three times while trying to park, you finally find a spot near the back of the lot and have to walk in the cold morning mist to the doors of the school. The halls are filled with too-loud kids and couples making out in corners. At the ring of the two minute bell, you walk to class, being pushing and shoved by the enormous crowd all trying to go in different directions. You go to first hour, try not to fall asleep, get your homework, the bell rings. Second hour, third hour, now it’s lunch and you’re not even hungry yet. After waiting for forty minutes in the lunch line, you sit down for the grand total of 10 minutes to eat before the bell rings and you have to go to fourth hour. Fifth, sixth, then its the end of the day and you drag your too heavy backpack out of the doors into the nightmare of the school parking lot again. After sitting in heavy traffic, honking, and blasting music for twenty minutes, you make it out onto the street. You go home, drop off your stuff, change clothes, eat a slice of toast, and head to work. After a four hour shift in which you fake smile at way too many stressed out adults, you go home to the mountain of homework awaiting you. One hour passes, then two, three hours in you stop to take a half hour break to eat dinner. You remark to your parents that you’re exhausted, to which they laugh and tell you that you have it easy. After your last two hours of homework, you change clothes and proceed to fall asleep while reading your SAT Prep Textbook. Repeat, repeat, you go through the week existing instead of living. “It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out” (Wallace 238). This is the life of a Troy High junior. We are simply going through life, hoping for the light at the end of the tunnel that is college.