Considering I’m someone who has never particularly loved school or been the most studious person, I thought high school would be the four longest years of my life. Joining marching band freshman year put me in an activity with kids from every grade level and I became close with some upperclassmen, specifically seniors.

Contrary to my personal expectations, pretty much all of them warned me to take my time and appreciate every moment of high school, claiming that these would become the “best years of my life” and that they would be “over before you know it” and all those clichés.

Of course, being brand new to high school, I took all of their advice with a grain of salt. Now that I’m coming to the end of my junior year, I’m realizing just how right they were.

When I had four years of high school ahead of me, I had seemingly nothing to worry about and nothing about my school experience seemed difficult yet. I was very unprepared for what high school would actually become for me.

DGS, once somewhere that I was afraid of and wanted to get out of ASAP, quickly became somewhat of a safe haven for me considering I have no real plan for myself after I graduate in 2020.

I’ve been totally Shawshanked by DGS. Even though I don’t particularly enjoy school, the security of knowing what school I’m going to year after year, the fact that I still get to live off of my parents and my still intact teenage freedom have kept me happy these past three years.

Seeing all my senior friends stress out about college and student loans and how they’ve committed to a college without even being sure on their major has made me increasingly aware of my lack of direction.

Senior year is looming over my head like the biggest storm cloud of this millennia. These have been both the longest and shortest three years of my life, but knowing that I only have one year left of these cold, yet somehow comforting concrete walls is giving me genuine anxiety.

Add that on top of the fact that I’m trying to stay afloat in the last weeks of junior year; I’m concerned for all of us juniors going into our final year next year, to say the least.

I honestly don’t know if I’ll allow myself to develop the amount of senioritis that I’ve seen people get, or if I’ll figure out my post DGS plans and learn to move on, but all I know is that I’ll definitely need to make the most of every moment next year.

To the freshman who are coming to DGS in the years to come, I have some of my own cliché advice for you: enjoy high school, don’t take everything too seriously, and appreciate being able to still be a kid. Before you know it, you’ll be faced with senior year and have to move on from being a mustang, just like the rest of us.