Dear Junior Year,

    It was rough, man. I could sit here and blame all my regrets on every possible external force, but I won’t. In every person’s life, there will come a time when they fly too close to the sun and will plummet to the ground, back into reality; this school year happened to be mine.

  Coming from an intense summer, I was determined to finally find a balance between my job, academic life, and social life- in juxtapose to previous years when I would only focus on one. But within a few weeks, I was completely burnt out. I was still scheduled long hours, all my days off would be spent with friends instead of homework, and my school work completely deteriorated. I began to develop horrible habits such as turning everything in late and skipping class to either sleep after working late or to work on missed assignments for the classes I wasn’t attending. My solution at the time was to quit my job, but everything else persisted. Now, I was truant, broke, and imposing my struggles on the people around me. Stress and anger in myself completely shadowed my state of mind for months.To make matters worse, in complete teen spirit, I got caught skipping, completely losing my family’s trust and reliance.

   Ultimately, these experiences taught me to grow up. Despite these self-created adversities, I’m grateful they taught me life lessons at a young age rather than later in life when these antics have lasting consequences. Eventually, I managed to dig myself out of this deep hole, but that didn’t happen until I acknowledged my faults and found solutions to them. Go to class. Advocate for yourself in every possible situation, whether it’s to your boss, your teachers, your family, your friends. Speak your mind. You’re going to outgrow friends or they’ll outgrow you, and that’s okay. Sometimes your need for happiness has to trump other’s judgement. With that being said, if what you did made you happy, don’t regret it afterwards.  

    Looking from the outside, junior year, you were just one big black hole, swallowing everything in its wake. But on the inside, you’ve been beneficial to me as a person and my happiness. You pushed me to come to terms with myself, my emotions, and what I want out of my life.

Thank you,

Kaitlyn