High School Graduation: A Paradigm Shift
Reading Time: 6 minutes
Yurui’s Summary
I’ve been reflecting on my high school journey in light of my graduation in a few days. Graduation is extremely bittersweet. High school has been a core part of my identity, even if I haven’t enjoyed every aspect of it. It feels like time has flown by - mostly due to the distinction between the experiencing and remembering self.
I’m going to miss seeing my mates every day, and the juniors I gave advice to; I’m going to miss my teachers, who acted as mentors for me; I’m going to miss the sense of structure and purpose that high school gave me (especially the extracurricular/leadership opportunities); I’m going to miss the familiar, homely nature of high school.
I won’t miss the intellectual confinement and time suck of high school; some classes just seemed so boring and really limited self-growth. For some classes I was counting down the minutes until the bell went for the next class or break.
Life after school gets really good or really shit; we might find ourselves lacking purpose. Time alone does that; no teacher to tell us what to do, no construct to dedicate our time towards.
This newfound freedom is terrifying, but liberating. We have the opportunity to make a name for ourselves, through self guided learning and self discovery. Constant, critical introspection seems like the way to find purpose and identity.
Time alone will mean more prioritisation of the people that truly matter; make the most of time with family before it’s too late. Friends come and go; make the most out of your time with them.
I’ll miss high school, for sure. Of course, emotions are running high as I write this. I have around 4 days left until I graduate.
The path forward is to appreciate what has been, look forward to what will be, but understand that we cannot time travel. We can never control the uncontrollable. Instead, all we can do is to enjoy every day of our lives as they come, as best we can. We are in the good old days right now.
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A few days ago, I was asked by a Year 7 student if Year 12 was hard. I hesitated for a few moments; this was a 12 year-old kid who was just starting out high school. My response was that life is hard; it only gets harder from here, but the harder it gets, the more fulfilment you’ll find in your suffering.
I graduate from high school in a few days, and I’ve spent the past few weeks reflecting on my high school journey, and trying to get down on paper some of the thoughts I’ve been having as this chapter of my life comes to a close.
In a nutshell, graduation is extremely bittersweet.
Going to school and academic performance has, for better or for worse, been a core aspect of my identity in my day-to-day life for the past 13 years. It’s given me a sense of meaning, a purpose to be striving towards. Yeah. For pretty much all of our conscious lives, our days have been spent revolving around this 30-hour block of time, followed by double the volume of hours in revision, homework and tutoring. Nevertheless, since mid-2022 (halfway through Year 11), I’ve had this burning desire to leave high school, get out there into the world, and try to learn the things I find genuinely fulfilling and intellectually stimulating. Interestingly, the time seems to have flown by, and I find myself wondering if I’ll ever want to come back to these days. Besides, I used to find myself ‘yearning’ now to be back in the primary school days, or in the future, building my career and attending university.
For many high school students (especially juniors), graduation seems to be eons away. We all know that it will come one day, just like death, but when you are staring it right in the face, it’s quite daunting. I think a lot of graduates don’t realise the extent of the paradigm shift they’ll be going through after high school graduation.
In hindsight, high school seems to have flown by, due to the distinction between the experiencing and remembering self (see Daniel Kahneman’s insights). High school is mundane. As humans, we tend to remember the dangers and rewards of life rather than the familiar. This is why unchanging environments tend to make our memory blur, and why summers can seem to last forever in childhood. Time passes quickly in hindsight, yet slowly in the moment when we are in a mundane, repetitive lifestyle.
For a 10-year-old, one year is 10 percent of their lives. For a 60-year-old, one year is less than two percent of their lives. Additionally, when we are children, we are constantly being introduced to new ideas that leave lasting impressions on our memories. We gauge time by memorable events, and fewer new things occur as we age to remember, making it seem like childhood lasted longer. I think that introducing novelty into my life has made memories stand out, and stretched time in a way. Our brains more vividly recall new happenings.
We are facing the end of formative chapters in our lives, and pretty much all we have known until now.
What I’m going to miss?
I’m going to miss seeing my mates. We’ll go from spending most of every single day with each other to chatting maybe once every few weeks, months, or years. There are some people I’ll never see again, and that’s a healthy, natural part of life. I’ll miss walking down a hallway, dapping up all the people I knew. I’ll miss the juniors who I gave advice to and took care of; seeing them succeed in their endeavours perhaps provided me with more gratification than my own accomplishments.
I’m going to miss my teachers; especially those who I were close with. I’ll miss being able to just go to them any time, any day for advice not only on academics, but on how to live a ‘good life’, how to find purpose and fulfilment, how to approach tertiary education, and how to make the most of my time.
I’ll miss the scheduling and structure within high school; it often gave me a defined goal, a purpose to work towards every day. All we needed to do each day was study, and everything else would work itself out (though later in high school I found less and less meaning in study; it became a day job, and my ‘side hustles’ gave me true fulfilment). I’ll miss the extracurricular and leadership opportunities I had the privilege to undertake; they gave me exposure to incredible people, identity-shaping experiences, and genuinely fun, chill, relaxed days.
In a discussion with a friend, we realised that school was a home away from home. A place we were familiar with, filled with people you see and interact with every day. Somewhere you felt included, safe, and wanted. I don’t think we’ll get that as much in the ‘real world’; our environments become a lot larger and less compact.
What I won’t miss?
I’m not going to miss the exam blocks, assignments, late nights cramming until 1am, waking up at 6am for morning class, counting down the minutes until the end of our boring hour-long classes, and all the bullshit that comes with any part of life. Things that come to mind include wearing the same thing every day, travelling to and from school, stupid rules like asking to go to the toilet; though I’m reaching quite a bit with these things. Maybe it wasn’t as bad in the moment, when it became a routine part of life. Studying and learning is lifelong, and there’s plenty more to come.
I won’t continue to be in this state of intellectual confinement; at university and in the rest of my life, I’ll have so much more time to learn the things I actually find stimulating. The time suck is finally gone! There’s now so much more time to do some more productive things - accelerating my learning through compoundable skills, rather than memorisation and rote learning on how to identify halogenation reactions, using a specific catalyst in the process.
School limits self-growth because we often feel guilty about not spending all of our time into the ‘one goal’ of achieving a high ATAR. I didn’t allow myself to explore intellectually as much as I wanted to; for a significant period of time, all I knew was school.
Moving forward?
I’ve heard that life after school gets either really good or really shit. I’ve been privileged enough to live quite a sheltered life, my parents caring for most of my basic needs. Once I graduate and move out into the real world, there’s going to be so much more personal responsibility, and there’s a good chance that I’ll find myself lacking purpose at times. Life is unforgiving; there’ll be no one to support me out there. I’m going to have to learn to look after myself, because I can’t get this opportunity to live life back.
We’re going to have a lot more time alone now. Graduation means that there’ll be no teacher to tell us what to do, no stable, major goal like the HSC to be working towards. Instead, we have full autonomy and control over how we dedicate our time and attention. Life will truly be what we make of it. It’ll be unfamiliar, but I hope to grow through the discomfort and the challenges of new environments. I think I’ll be fine, as long as I work towards the best version of myself and regularly evaluate the direction that my life is headed in (through journaling)!
I find this newfound freedom terrifying, but liberating. We have to learn to find meaning again, redefine our purpose every day, because no one’s holding our hands anymore. We now have the chance to go out there, to make something of ourselves! We no longer have to sit in class for six hours a day, confined not only by the physical walls of the classroom but also by the unspoken rooms of the classroom. We have so much potential; how are we going to use it? Its terrifying nature arises from the very freedom it provides; what if I fall into hedonism? What if I lose who I am? Again, constant critical introspection to achieve clarity seems like the way to go here.
Socially?
I’m happy to be spending more time alone and with the people that truly matter to me; especially my family. Self-discovery and time with those I care about most before I leave home. The 5-person family dinners, all under the same roof and on the same table will never come regularly again. We’ll have gone our own ways, my brothers and myself. After graduation, it’s going to be a priority of mine to cherish the time I have with family, and choose carefully how I spend time socially; investing in friendships that will last, not because we go to school together.
Friends come and go. I guess you could say that the memories we made together in class were so special because of the mundanity of high school. We’ll really have to make an effort to sustain friendships after high school; the ones who are meant to stay, will stay. Some of these guys I’ll never see ever again, but again, that’s okay. I’m excited to make some more memories after graduation, spending some late nights out with the bois.
There’s a huge difference between being lonely and alone. You can find genuine happiness, peace, and fulfilment when you’re alone; being lonely is emotional, a completely different mindset. It’s okay to be alone, physically. It’s not good to be lonely, emotionally. I’m happy that I’ll now have the freedom to travel, learn, build myself, and become the best version of myself, not to mention, to catch up on my sleep. 1am to 7am on school days is not fun; 11pm to 9am sounds much better.
As our learning potential is at the highest in our youth, I’m eager to make the most of the free time I now have.
I’ll miss high school, for sure. Of course, emotions are running high as I write this. It’s so hard to rationalise emotions; this too, shall pass. It takes time to internalise, and sometimes you only learn through experience. To process emotions, we must let them all out, but eventually come back to rationality.
I have around four days left until I graduate.
The path forward is to appreciate what has been, look forward to what will be, but understand that we cannot time travel. We can never control the uncontrollable. Instead, all we can do is to enjoy every day of our lives as they come, as best we can.
We are in the good old days right now.
Yurui
