An Open Letter To The People I Went To High School With

Schaumburg High School Class of 2014!  

High school was a memorable time in my life. I truly learned a lot from amazing teachers and even better friends who supported me through my ups and downs. I looked forward to off-campus lunch trips with my best friend. Prom and Senior Picnic and Senior Brunch are events I will never forget.  

High school is such a weird time for teenagers. We start at 14 or 15 and by the time we graduate, we are legal adults with a newfound sense of independence and we are supposed to know how to navigate life. In a way I ran so far away for college to get away from high school. People in the ‘Burg tend to get stuck in the monotony that is Schaumburg, Illinois. They forget there is more out there than Woodfield Mall and VV Nails. 

Now, most of us are finishing our sophomore year of college and will be entering our 20’s this year.  

I check on a lot of you guys periodically to see how you all are doing. I may send a text every now and then to let you know that I’m thinking about you or I ask somebody how you’ve been if I don’t have your number. Or I’ll send a random snapchat here and there. I love seeing posts on Facebook about when you guys get new jobs, internships, and acceptances into study abroad programs. I love seeing your vacation Snapchats and Instagram throwbacks. Seriously, I do. I try to “like” everything I can. 

Most of us had our social groups and rarely interacted with each other. But we knew who was in whose group. We knew what was going on with each other because we had to coexist and see each other everyday. Some of us were friends by convenience and now don’t speak upon graduation. Some of the notorious best friend pairs are still inseparable—as they should be. Some high school couples are still together. (Major props to that).  

It is weird because I thought I would remain friends with a lot of you after we got our diplomas. As I scroll through my Snapchat friends, the majority of them are my new college friends and a few people from SHS scattered in between. I look at my inbox on Facebook or my recent text messages and none of the messages are from my high school friends. I don’t know if I should be ecstatic because I have so many new friends, or melancholy because I no longer communicate with people I knew so well at one point in time. When you guys grace my Timehop, I screenshot it and send it to you because we really had some of the best times together. Friday night football games, late nights at McDonald’s, September Fest, and the list goes on. 

Some of you…I’m glad I will never see you again. I’ve unfriended over 200 of you on Facebook because of racist or ignorant comments. I wish you well, but I’m glad I will never have to interact or be forced to sit next to you in physics class again.

“Back in high school,” is a phrase that college kids throw around so casually. And the more we talk about high school, the farther away it seems. We can’t put activities from high school on our resumes when they shaped our development and growth as students and future leaders. High school becomes obsolete in college and we are told that it doesn’t matter, which is true to an extent. Employers ask for your college transcript, not high school report. Job recruiters care about your college activities and experiences, not high school stuff. But in high school we learn how to communicate with people our age. We have this sense of carelessness because we still have our parents to fall back on if something goes wrong. They say enjoy high school while it lasts because you are going to miss it when you graduate.  

I miss the teachers. Their knowledge and wisdom has shaped me as a student in college. I miss my (real) friends. Seeing them every day was amazing and I won’t forget the memories we made. But I don’t miss taking eight classes a day.  I don’t miss the cattiness. I don’t miss having to forcibly be around people who don’t respect me because I’m black. I don’t miss being around people whose families are blatantly rude to immigrants or minorities when they aren’t guarded in the walls of SHS.  

High school was real with y’all. Catch you on the flip side.