The Pebble Issue 1

selfie
GOODBYE,MPH
A senior reflects on high school and looks forward to college
Photo and story by Seamus Mulhern
For me,
high
school is
like a relationship.
One day,
you’re going
about your
business and
you meet this
person. You
strike up a
conversation
and it quickly
becomes apparent
that this person is … different.
For example, during my first day of high
school, I spent a whole study hall talking to
people I had just met rather than doing work.
I know that sounds trivial, but compared to
middle school, where someone gets lectured
for whistling too loudly, it felt liberating.
It seems as though there’s a world of mystery
surrounding this new person in your life.
A collection of undiscovered revelations not
just about them, but about your life and the
world as a whole. At first glance, High School
is welcoming and interesting and warm and
sweet. The teachers are nice, the students are
all right, the lunch is certainly better than at
the public middle school I attended.
The first few days together live up to expectations.
You’re inseparable. Every day feels
like the best day of your life.
Sure, the classes are a bit harder, but
every day is a new adventure. Every day, I was
meeting new people and making new friends.
Best of all, it’s all under the guise of being able
to say that you are a high-schooler. During
my first few days of high school, I had a much
easier time making friends than my entire
time in middle school. There was a sense of
liberation, as if I was being restricted for my
entire life and I was just then learning what
it meant to be my own person. I will never
forget the time when I helped make a bike for
a science project or my first free block when
I watched Monty Python with friends when I
should have been studying for a math quiz.
It’s unexplainable. It’s engaging. Nothing
can stop you. You’re killin’ it.
Then, what feels like an eternity passes
by. Suddenly, this person who had once felt so
welcoming and interesting becomes someone
you feel distant from. What used to fill you
with excitement and joy now just becomes a
source of needless anxiety and stress.
There’s a consistent onslaught of difficult
projects and exams, social drama, and, a lot
of the time, whenever you’re there, you just
feel uncomfortable with yourself. It just does
not feel like you’re in the right place.
In my case, I was obsessing over creating
the perfect college application, creating a
great artistic portfolio to apply for a screenwriting
degree, and, all the while, trying to
make time to be a relatively social person in
my final year of being “young and innocent.”
Because of all of this, High School feels
very clingy. Though still nice and all, High
School’s previously inviting embrace suddenly
becomes an inescapable grip that makes
you feel trapped. It feels like you’re being tied
up by college deadlines, STP deadlines and
homework deadlines. You just get to a point
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