Whatever people have told you, I’ll set it straight. High school is hard. Nothing can compete against it. It’s a test, a trail, and only a few can actually navigate through it and it’s many tunnels and be able to succeed. However, those very few would tell you one main thing. Getting through it alone is impossible. Between the trails brought by the taskmakers, the drama, betrayal, the constant lack of energy, the tinge of hormones, and the weight of adulthood ahead, it all adds up. High school is a team effort. Most enter young, fresh and innocent, completely unaware of what lies ahead. They flounder around, bouncing from team to team, experimenting with the different skill levels, analyzing the compatibility, and the most important component: trust. That’s tactic one, the majority’s all popular choice. I however went with the second, let’s say more dangerous, or unpredictable option. I came into the battle of highschool with my team already assembled. The nerd, the emo, the popular, the energy filled adventurer, and the tough leader. We all fit together, like the pieces of a puzzle. We had met over the summer and had become a quick team, flowing easily together as a group in the face of high school. Throughout the next two years we stuck together like glue, we knew our strengths, we knew our weaknesses, we knew what makes each other tick, and how we did our best work. We were unstoppable, a force to be reckoned with. There is a problem with our unbreakable team. This problem had been known as the enemy of most excursions, known as logic, statistics and facts. High school is where you lose your friends. Where people are hunted, fought, attacked, backstabbed, and ruined. The odds of you being left behind, ignored, or forgotten are so high that most people give up, or worse, they don’t even try. They go through the experience name on a roster, a name in a computer, a grade in a class. Without anyone to call, no backup, no team to pick you up when you fall.

As I said, high school is hard. It’s quite a journey and without the people there to keep you afloat through the sea of pain and torture that you have to endure, you won’t make it. I could never have gotten through the trails without some form of comfort, reassurance, and hope from my team. They pulled me back when I started to drift away, when I forgot of the significance of their existence, when I wanted to quit or fall back. I needed them. Whether or not I realized that back when I began high school or ten years into the future, They were my rock. Without them I would have been another tale on the floors of the high school. A name in a record book, gathering dust, and forgotten.