If there were a pamphlet called “Welcome to Life,” then perhaps it would be easier to figure everything out. It could go on about the must have experiences of your childhood; the first day of kindergarten where you get dared to eat paste and some kid barfs on the table, snow days where you would rather freeze than give in to the snowball fight with your neighbors, and the summer’s you spend on your cousins’ farm - eating watermelon and chasing each other with popsicle stained smiles in the sunflower spotted cornfields.

It might also explain the suck fest of middle school – droning on about the made up drama of the lives they wish they had. Then about the fake boyfriend/girlfriend scenarios that would eventually overlap into high school, and noting that it’s mandatory to pass notes at least five times a day. It would then make the point that the generalization is true; you must choose between becoming a band geek or a cheerleader – you’ll end up being one or the other, no matter what.

The high school section would have to be slightly more in depth. It would have to cover careful credentials, like the fact that freshmen year will suck. There is no alternative; it’s just a part of life. Sophomore year will be a lot more fun, as long as your best friend has a car. Somewhere along the lines of junior year you’ll think you’re going to start a band, but your dreams are somewhat extinguished by the end of the year when you’re either consumed by family drama or catch mono.

What really needs clarification is senior year. It’s the year you supposedly enter adulthood, and also get bombarded with achievement tests, academic stress and college applications galore. Family stress, friends and flirty relationships are just more evidence that – “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

This is the journal of a seventeen year old girl. The great adventure of keeping the friends you have (no matter how far away) and making the ones you’ll need. How finding out where you’ll be is part of realizing where you’re coming from, and that maybe it isn’t the end of the world after all.

And then again, maybe it is…

-:--:-