Coming into High school as a freshman, I thought it was going to be the hardest four years of my life. I was never so wrong. High school is nothing like the movies or the many TV shows that have 25 year olds playing 16 to 18 year olds. There are no happy endings or situations where things work out in the end. The main idea that these movies and shows miss is the idea of life.

Life isn’t the stereotypical idea of someone always saying its hard or unfair. Life is ever changing and we can either change with it or fail to make the best of every situation. That idea is the same for high school and my message for anyone reading this is, put your life into perspective. Ask yourself the most important question, am I satisfied with where my life is right now?

I understand that this question isn’t something you say aloud or when your’re talking to someone. It’s a question that you live with everyday. You wake up with it, go to school with it and it’s there when you’re hanging out with friends or family. If we fail to try to answer this question, then life will become hard or unfair.

When we slow down and put our lives into perspective, we have a chance to see where we are and improve on the situation we are in. At school, this could be when you get a bad grade on a test and are afraid to tell your parents. It could be when you don’t make the basketball team or anything else extracurricular and now feel you aren’t as good as you previously thought. This is exactly the right time to ask ourselves, am I satisfied with where my life is right now?

It’s the right time because you or someone out there has been working to make the team, get the best grade or earn that award and it didn’t work out. However, I have to ask one more question that isn’t as dramatic, but still important. My question is what just happened as bad as you are making it?

We must ask this either before or after we ask our satisfaction in our lives. Because if we stress about the bad grade or anything else pertaining to school or our teenage lives, then we may never be able to move past it. That idea will spiral into a destructive pattern where you or us can never move on to another door that will lead to something better.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like using cheesy quotes, like when a door closes another opens. But sometime we need to open that door, gain perspective and work hard to improve your life. As you progress through high school, remember that you and only you can make your life better. You have to choose between waiting for that moment to thrive or get up and go get it yourself.