I Wanna Run Through the Halls of my High School

You don't need a degree to realize that high school and college are very different worlds. Different levels of independence and maturity (you decide where it's higher), decisions that affect your life at different degrees, different types of people, different experiences. But some of the more intricate nuances may be less obvious. For example, in high school, for most groups, clubs, teams, and organizations, we had to report to an elder. A questionably wiser authority -- a parent, an adviser, a teacher, a coach, etc. But in college, we are led by our peers, and indirectly, by ourselves.

Of the many rules at my high school, one was that we could not participate in after-school activities if we were not in attendance at a specific number (five I think?) classes during the day. So if someone was "too sick" to come to class, the administration had decided that the student was also too sick to come to practice or sing at the concert or play at the game. Clearly, there are some issues with this rule. Sure, it kept students from skipping class for no reason and then being able to participate in the fun stuff. But at K-Life, this was the less likely situation.

Here was the more likely circumstance: A student (who is also an athlete, actor, singer, dancer, robot by night) wakes up feeling under the weather and needs just a couple more hours of sleep. Here he is faced with two choices. He can sleep in and kick the sickness or he can roll out of bed and go to school anyway. With option 1, even if he feels better by 3:30 PM, he cannot participate in his game or performance, whereas with option 2, he can, but chances are, he'll only feel worse by the time 3:30 rolls around, yielding a subpar performance. Put yourself in the mind of an overachiever (most of you probably don't have to do much pretending) -- which one do you choose? Clearly, this rule unintentionally hurts the individual and the team.

But in college, with almost no repercussions, you can choose to skip those morning classes in the interest of studying for an exam or saving your strength for a group meeting or rehearsal where your attendance is vital.

High school was also a time for exploring interests and experimenting with identities. Since we never quite had to vocalize what activity was most important to us, sometimes that meant not even knowing for ourselves.

Just a couple weeks in college made it pretty clear that priorities were crucial. To be fully committed to more than a couple groups and organizations is close to impossible. And I'm so much more comfortable accepting it. It's okay to admit that something is not your "top" priority, so long as you deliver whatever you commit to delivering.

Now that I'm in the position of "okay-ing" other conflicts, I'm noticing how wrapped up we are in the high school sentiment. In feeling a need to apologize for or hide our other commitments.

There are only 24 hours in a day, and if you have my type of luck, your only two commitments of the day will be during the exact same time period. As the years go by, this will become more and more clear: In the end, the only person you have to answer to is yourself.