Snellville Teen Writes about School and Life Lessons

By Hailey Prainito, a student at Snellville Middle School.

In kindergarten, we learn to read and write; in third grade we learn how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. We are spoon-fed throughout our school years, seventh grade being the worst, because when eighth grade starts, we are opened up to the mysteries and horrors of the world. We come to reality that we aren’t as smart as we thought, or as mature as we seem; we are merely the babies of the future.

We spend all of eighth grade prepping for high school, being scared by the stories from our teachers about how we are considered independent the moment we lay toes on the cold floor they call South Gwinnett. It’s up to us to set our goals, our boundaries, and our path to our unique future. However, being scared only makes it harder and harder to push on. We grab the hardest classes we can for freshman year, fearing that colleges are only looking for students who take two AP classes instead of one or even gifted classes. We push so much to be perfect to be the one who stands out, that we lose sight of our child hood.

Yes, high school is about getting ready for the real world, but it’s also about finding yourself. Making mistakes to learn from then, making friends just to lose them and losing them to find them; it’s about growing up, good ways and bad. As we all appreciate the care from our teachers in how much they try to ready us for the world, our social life seems to fade. You learn 50% of how to run your life in school, the other 50% is from the streets and mistakes and other things. Guide us as little as possible; let us take the test of life to learn the lesson of life.