High School

I am a blog reader. There are about 15 blogs I check daily, others I try to keep up on when I remember they exist. It interests me to know what other people find important in their lives to write about. Many just report their day's activities. While I occasionally want to do that here (mostly so I can read this in the future and remember how I spent my time), I am often interested in the things people ponder daily. The things they find interesting enough to dissect and sculpt into a blog post.

One blogger I've found recently and enjoy reading is Jen ten Haaf. I don't remember how I found her exactly, but I've begun reading because I feel a connection with her. we are similar in age and life situation. She leads a much more interesting and adventurous life than my own, and I do enjoy living vicariously through others.

Her most recently blog entry held this gem that I felt needed repeating:

"One of the things that, if you step into a high school years after you stopped attending regularly, you notice immediately is the sameness of it all. the way there are those girls, tall, thin, and beautiful, who manage to find each other and become each others' best friends. The strange way that they scout each other out in second grade is incredible...and consistent. And there's the athletes. The guys who date the tall, thin, beautiful girls and they become best friends too. Then there are the kids who will grow up to be everyone's bosses."

This is the truth I've wanted to write about recently. I spend a lot of time with high school students, as their coach, their director, and as a coach's wife. I watch their interactions with each other and with me. Most of the students were in early elementary school when I attended their high school nearly a decade ago. They remember me (or a skewed version of me, as I was a senior and they were mere second graders). I try to be a good coach and mentor, remembering how powerful those influences were to me when I was 17.

I see myself in them, and they don't realize it. they never saw me insecure about my height. Or weight. Or hair. They didn't realize that, despite what they saw at school, I was anxious, self-conscious, and full of doubt about who I was and what I was doing. I agonized over my college applications, panicked about my ACTs. Brett and I struggled through our relationship in high school, through ugly fights and tears--just like every couple in high school. They never saw that--they only see us as a happy married couple, high school sweethearts who made it work.

High school just seems like a never-ending loop. Sure there are different students, teachers, fashion, and technology. But it's really all the same. It's the same type of kids--the pretty girls, the athletes, the nerds. The moments of blinding insecurity and the moments of glory.

I try to teach my kids to enjoy high school. That while it feels so all-consuming, so important, that it's fleeting. High school contained some of the best times of my life. And many of the worst. It's hard to tell them it gets better--in ways, it does. But in many ways, it stays the same.

In many ways, life is in the same loop as high school--the pretty girls, the athletes, the nerds--they're all still at your job, many in the same roles (although the nerd is definitely your boss. Or your IT guy. Either way, he's super important, so be nice to him).

I want to teach my girls that they are beautiful. Despite the days they hate their thighs, hate their hair, hate their nose--they are beautiful. Embrace it. In seven years, they will long for their athletic, volleyball body. I try to teach the boys to respect their girlfriends, and friends who are girls. Respect their boundaries, respect their bodies, and respect themselves.

There are so many things I wish I could tell my high school self (starting with lay off the eyeliner!). But since I can't, I try to tell these precious souls who are growing up now--dealing with the best of times and worst of times, that the scary loop of high school with both end and continue forever.