We’ve all heard it before. “You think your life is hard right now? Wait until you get into the real world!” Almost every adult that I have ever met has said that in comparison to life after your 18th birthday, high school is meaningless; it’s only once high school is over that life really starts. So, the question is: what is the real world like? How will it be when we finally start living, like, for real? After a bit of thinking, I’ve come to the conclusion that the real world is a lot closer than we think. In fact, as weird as it sounds, we’ve actually been living in it this whole time.

We all live in the real world, not just the adults who work a 9 to 5 at Weis. Though high school is its own type of odd reality, it doesn’t mean that it’s a fake world. It’s here in the halls of GNA that we have learned the values that every adult uses in their daily lives. We know what it’s like to work hard. Although someone outside of high school might have a full time job and pay their bills, we also have a full time job: it’s called school. We wake up at 6:00 in the morning and work until 2 every day from Monday to Friday, typing until our fingers ache and our heads swim with numbers and equations. We stay up until the early hours of the morning finishing homework for the next day, and most of us keep part-time jobs along with this. Many of us pay bills as well, though admittedly they aren’t as much money.

We as high school students have to deal with stress, just as everyone else does. Our entire future depends on our Calculus final, and if that isn’t stressful, I don’t know what is. We deal with petty friendships and drama that drag on for days, though if adults are honest with themselves, they deal with that as well, but they just have the option of avoiding the people they’re fighting with, while high school students have to see them every day. We’ve found ourselves in tight spots, had good days, had bad days, and made memories that’ll last a life time. Just because we do it in a different environment than adults do it, doesn’t mean that the things we experience aren’t real.

As a high school student, I’m sick of hearing the phrase “the real world.” I live in a real world that has just as many ups and downs as the world adults live in. I’ve experienced things in high school that many people would never be able to experience outside the walls of a school, and I know once I leave, I’ll be living in the same world as I have always been. High school students don’t have to wait to emerge into the real world. We’re already here.