Humans of State High

“I guess one thing that’s irreplaceable is just kind of like, the memories that you can make and the time that you have, because I feel like–it’s really hit me recently, that we only have like a year and a half left before we’re adults and out in the real world. There’s only so much time we can spend as a kid just hanging out with friends and doing whatever spontaneous random things. I feel this childhood time is irreplaceable because once you’re an adult, you’re never gonna be able to do it the same way you were as a kid. I do feel like I’ve made pretty good with the time I’ve had, like I spent a lot of time with friends in the past. We would hang out almost every day in elementary and middle school, and still some in high school. Although I do feel like quarantine has kind of made me wish that I was doing more with this time. But, there’s not really much you can do about that, that’s just what it is.” (1/3)

“One thing that I really don’t know, it’s kind of just, what is the purpose of life, which is a really crazy question that no one can truly answer, but sometimes, I just wonder, like–because, you want to prepare for college to get a good job, and get a good job to have good money to provide for yourself and your family, but at the end of the day, there has to be some end to that. Like, you can’t just keep wanting one thing to get another thing. It kind of just–sometimes it feels like a lot of the things that you care about are just arbitrary things that society made up, and when is it truly something that you care about? I feel like the purpose of life is definitely to enjoy the time you have because it’s limited, and to spend time with people you care about and enjoy spending time with, but I’m not really sure past that. I feel like I’ve always thought that having fun and spending time with people you care about is important. I guess as I’ve gotten older, there [have] been more things to think about with it, because when I was younger, it was just like ‘yeah, I’m gonna go to school and then be with my friends.’ But when you get to high school, you kind of have to weigh that against doing things for your future. The question is, how much time can you justify just having fun-which is definitely good and important, like you need to spend time having fun–but at some point, I should also spend some working towards long-term happiness instead of just short-term.” (2/3)

“I remember a conversation that I had with my dad a couple years ago–and it wasn’t necessarily just one conversation, but a string of them–where I kind of talked with him about his life and the experiences he went through [in] high school and college. He changed a lot as a person from high school to college, and he found a lot of motivation for school during college, and I feel–it kind of gave me, like it made me feel a lot better about the future and stuff because it made me realize that even if your high school [experience] doesn’t go perfectly and you go to a different college than the one you wanted to, it’s still–you can still get your life back on track any time. Even though it feels right now like ‘oh, you need to be ready,’ [or that] by the time you finish high school you need to know what you’re doing, you really don’t need to. You can figure out a lot about yourself in college when you go off on your own for the first time.” (3/3)