Tyler Kendall
Features Editor
Second semester senior Phoebe Wilks can be seen walking around school with a Disney princess backpack slung over her shoulder. Phoebe is one of the countless students who decided to enter senior year not only sporting, but embracing this childish style. “My princess backpack brings me back to being a little kid. It’s my last year of high school, so it’s sort of how I hold on to being a child before I morph into an adult,” she said.
High school has always served as a transitional period from childhood to adulthood. Students enter when they are barely teenagers, and emerge as adults with new perceptions and opinions on life and society. High school accounts for an essential time frame in each student’s life, including learning how to deal with newfound responsibilities. For most, these years are a reality check, slowly but surely preparing each teenager for the future.
Many students feel the burden of high school’s demands and being thrust into the world of adulthood weighing down on them. “What I miss most about my childhood is that feeling of carelessness,” Phoebe said.
Sophomore Owen Van De Graaf agreed.
“I miss having not as much responsibility,” he said.
For many students, it was the familiar sense that present actions wouldn’t dictate the future, that they longed for the most. “I miss being careless and wasting time watching cartoons,” senior Sam Hines said.
“I miss it being socially acceptable to just sit on the couch and watch cartoons or play video games all day. That’s when life was easy,” sophomore Mike Dunn-Weiss added.
It is the that feeling that each action in high school will circle back into students lives which can haunt the teenage mind the most. High school isn’t like elementary school where grades weren’t calculated with numbers, but rather a letter system where getting, “usually” on the report card was good, and “consistent” was stellar.
“When I think about my childhood it was relaxed all the time, I had no stress. I didn’t have to worry about grades, high school, friends, or college,” Sam said.
It is also the sense of freedom of being a child, that many high schoolers miss. Childhood is the time of curiosity and innocence, before being thrust into the real world. “I miss being gullible because you didn’t have to face the disappointment of life, you just believed everything you heard,” sophomore Azadeh Amir-Aslani said. “When I was younger, I actually believed I could grow up and become a princess.”
Although the innocence of childhood is only retainable for so long, tangible links can be made between the past and the present so that some students can hold on to the whimsical life they used to have. “I miss Disney movies the most, because they would let me use my imagination,” freshman Helena Ponterotto said. “Now I like to use the blog site Tumblr to post creative pictures. It lets me use my imagination, like when I was a little kid.”
For many students, the past has influenced the present. “I miss my princess tiara the most. I used to be able to just put it on and I would transform into a different person. I guess that’s what inspired me to dance though, being that little kid and getting the feeling that I could be what I wanted to be,” sophomore Nicolette Lathouris said.
Ultimately, though, as students move into the future the key is finding the balance between the realms of childhood and adolescence. It’s walking that fine line that makes the high school experience so exhilarating and memorable. “As much as I miss my childhood, there’s nothing really specific that I would want to go back to,” freshman Roger* said. “I prefer to just look into the future, wherever that may lead me.”
*Name has been changed
