Hot Topic Tuesday: High School is Scary

The summer before ninth grade, I had major stress about, well--the ninth grade. I was SCARED about high school, you guys. I went to the same elementary school for 9 years--kindergarten to the eighth grade. Some of my classmates had been there since pre-school. There was no middle school for us and this made the transition to HS seem even more daunting than it usually is. Throw in the fact that my closest friend at elementary school was going to a DIFFERENT high school than I was, and I was facing that first day more or less on my own. So basically, I was terrified. All I could think about, 24/7, was how wrong everything could go.

EVERYTHING!

I should disclaimer that I am a professional worrier. I can turn ANYTHING insignificant thing into a LARGE SCALE worry. Don't be like me, kids!

Anyways, I was sort of reflecting on this when I was trying to pick a Hot Topic for Tuesday. I was like, "It's got to be about high school." And then I was like, "What can I possibly say about high school?" And then I was like, "Man, Courtney, remember how SCARED you were of high school?"

And then I chuckled and wrote this blog entry.

The biggest things I was afraid of in no particular order:

Getting lost - because no one in the history of attending high school had ever gotten lost before
Sitting on the bus alone - because only losers sit on the bus alone, if everything I had learned from movies and books and songs about high school was true
Eating lunch alone - see above, except replace 'bus' for 'cafeteria'
Not making friends - because that would have sucked
Failing everything - BECAUSE IF YOU FAIL IN HIGH SCHOOL, YOU FAIL LIFE*

There was more than that, but those were the biggest ones. They all seem pretty insignificant now but at the time they felt HUGE to me. And no matter how much people reassured me that I'd be fine and I was making a mountain out of a molehill, I could not stop stressing about it. It wasn't until I actually went and got it over with that I could see how much of a big deal they WEREN'T...

... Even when some of my "worst" fears ended up coming true.

(I GOT LOST YOU GUYS. AND I SURVIVED. Phew. Sometimes I sat on the bus ALONE! Sometimes I didn't! Same with eating lunch! My grades were fair-middling and it was not the end of the world!)

I was thinking if I could go back in time, I would stop by my house and tell my pre-high school self it would all be okay and that I would deal with much more terrible things later on in my life. My pre-high school self would probably not believe the first half of that sentence and consider the second half a terrible warning so actually if I could go back in time, I would maybe do something much more noble like somehow costar in a movie with Ray Milland.




Ray Milland: afraid of school or not?

BUT ANYWAYS.

My questions for you:

Were you/are you prepared for high school and what were you worried most about when it came to transitioning to the ninth grade? And especially: what advice would you give to anxious teens preparing for their first year?



* Did y'all see Hannah's awesome Teen Thursday blog post about failing? So worth the read.