“The best four years of your life” – a phrase we’re told again and again as we approach high school, as each of us is turning the corner into this new chapter in our lives, waiting for this universal experience to happen. On that first day, many of us walk through those double doors feeling nervous, excited, and maybe even terrified, expecting these years to shape us and leave us with memories we hold onto forever. But how true is that really? Was that the reality for the millions of high school students who have come before us?
The idea of the quintessential American “high school experience” is everywhere. From movies and TV shows to the stories of our parents or older siblings, a notion is drilled into many kids’ minds that high school is filled with friendships, parties, and adventures – seemingly everything we’re supposed to remember for the rest of our lives. We’re sold a vision of high school as the peak of our adolescence, but reality doesn’t often match up with the fantasy. For some, maybe it’s true. They thrive in these four years, soaking in the moments, relationships, wanting to relive it over again. But that’s not everyone’s story.
Drew Spivack (‘26) puts it this way: “I think there is a pressure to have a high school experience, but only a sense of having one…But I feel like it’s less focused on enjoying it and more focused on just getting into college… mainly when you’re thinking about it… a lot of times, your first thought isn’t even, do I want to do this? It’s: would this look good for college?”
Beyond the many students who only see high school as necessary step on the path to college, what about the people who sit alone on Friday nights, scrolling through social media and watching others live the “perfect” high school experience? For every person living in it, there are others who struggle with loneliness, feeling like they’re on the outside looking in and wondering why this promised experience feels so elusive.
Why do we tell people these will be the “best years” of their lives? Are we setting them up to feel like they’ve missed out if their experience doesn’t match the standard? Maybe it’s time to question the expectation itself. High school can be a pivotal time, but it’s not the end of our stories. Life keeps going, and some of the most memorable and life-changing experiences may be waiting beyond the hallways of high school.
Spivack believes that “choosing to get involved can be a big part of [the high school experience], because if you choose to get involved in something that you really enjoy, and you do it all throughout high school, then that creates memories for you. But high school itself…it’s not very memorable. It’s the extras that come along with it, like field trips… senior year activities, junior prom, dances, and everything that you choose to get involved in kind of makes [the experience].”
Instead of measuring these years against some ideal, what if we embraced them just as one small and unique chapter.
Spivack suggests that it’s about “doing things that [we] truly want to do…get involved in activities because you want to, and that makes the memories for yourself if you’re enjoying what you’re doing.”
What if we made room for each person’s experience to be enough, just as it is, without the pressure to match someone else’s version of “the best?” Maybe then we’d find real value in these years–not just as a peak, but as a beginning.