Dwelling on My Numbered Days

Fourteen. It’s a mind boggling number, but that’s how many days are left in my high school career. My senioritis has reached its maximum potential, thus rendering all homework assignments and projects useless in my mind. The only thing that’s giving me slight motivation is the idea that today is the third to last Wednesday that I will ever walk through the halls of FHC. The idea that in three weeks, high school will be completely behind me.

The fact that my days here are numbered has given me many thoughts about how many lasts are coming up. Pretty soon it’ll be the last Monday, and the last Tuesday, and the last Wednesday. I’ll get on the bus in the morning for the last time, and then I’ll step off it onto the curb by my house, never to return or get up at 5:45 again in order to catch it on time. I could mention more, but writing about this is already making me sad enough. I mentioned it in a previous column, but I hate change. So with all of these last, final, closing events coming up, it hits me even more that time is ticking, and this part of my life is almost completely up. But I’m trying not to dwell on it too much. It’s just a small part of my life, if you really think about it.

When we’re stuck at certain points in our lives, we tend to get too sucked into them and feel as if time has stopped. I can say with one hundred percent honesty that it seems like school has never had an ending. You’re telling me that I have to go through thirteen years of sitting at a desk, followed by two to four more, and even more than that if I want to achieve a doctorate? That’s enough to make anyone feel like their life is nothing but endless education. And that’s not wrong. From the age of five until the middle of our twenties, we’re stuck in school. It feels like ninety percent of our lives as kids is spent in a classroom. But when you think about all the years we have left, school is such a small piece of your life.

So when I think about my numbered days left in high school, I try not to feel too upset about the end of this era that in reality, is just a small percentage of my life. Twenty years spent in class, preparing for a job in the real world, is nothing compared to a hundred years of life. And yes, I understand that not all of us will reach one hundred. But seventy, eighty, and ninety years of life-that’s still plenty of time to accomplish so many things.

So instead of treating my numbered days as a burden, and just getting through each day til it’s over, I’m going to look at it differently. I’m going to think of it as more of as if I have lived out my ninety years of this part of my life, and I’m going to make the most of every little thing I have left to enjoy at FHC. Because this is as young as we are ever going to be.