As people – especially high school students – get older, they begin to push more and more to be considered an adult. Curfews are protested, punishments are shirked, and the very thought of being dropped off somewhere by a parent is enough to make most teenagers cringe. It is all part of the dangerous mentality that once a person reaches the last couple years of their education, they somehow stop being a kid.

From the moment a student steps foot into high school, they are being urged to think about the future. College representatives visit at lunchtime, kids are being urged to take College Now and AP classes to prepare for the future, and students are working themselves down to the bone trying to juggle school work, a job, and extracurriculars.

Now, preparing for what will come after high school is not a bad thing at all. It is a good idea to think about the career you want to pursue after graduation. However, it shouldn’t come at the expense of childhood.

At the end of the day, that’s what high schoolers are: children. As much as we would like to consider ourselves grown-up members of society, doing all the things that our parents have been doing for years, the truth is that we’re not. 

Working yourself to exhaustion every single day of your life may seem like a good idea right now, but you don’t want to look back twenty years from now and regret the fact that you thought you outgrew childhood after eighth grade.

So be a kid. Go outside once in a while. Eat dinner with friends on the weekend. Laugh at dumb jokes, and hug the people you love more than you do right now (because I guarantee you’re not doing it enough)