Being a high school senior is harder than it looks

There are so many things we do not tell high school seniors about what their senior year is really like. What's happening is maybe the most challenging psychological warfare of your life. And because no one frames it that way, the way most seniors deal with it is they're just kind of either depressed or anxious or they dissociate, like they just kind of like shut down. I think the reason why we don't talk about this is senior year is supposed to represent this crowning achievement of your whole life. You're supposed to just enjoy every moment of it. You're supposed to walk down the hallway like you're a Greek god, right? Like everything just has worked out, you've worked all this way to get here, you're ready to leave. And what you haven't been told or what no one talks about is the incredible amount of anxiety that you've been building for years about what's next is now like fully in front of you. Also, people are getting into colleges around you and you know you're waiting for your decisions, right? So you're waiting for things to come in and you start to hear right now, December, January, into February, you start hearing who's getting into college and who's not and who's getting into the college they wanted. And because all of you are on social media, whatever you're on, you all know each other's story, right? And what's coming up are going to be all the videos of people opening their acceptance letters. Sometimes they fake them, right? Like they've already opened them so they know. And they get surrounded by their folks and they like open it up and they cheer and they explode and it's awesome. Then there's bed parties and there's all this stuff just reinforces how powerless kind of you are in this world and that it's all like this big lottery and you either win or lose, right? It's a zero-sum game. You're either a winner or a loser. It's terrible. We're all kind of not either realizing this is happening or pretending it's not happening. So listen, you have to be really, really nice to yourself. You have to be really, really nice to yourself. You've learned to not be nice to yourself. You've learned to either be tough or to get over it or to move on or to work harder. But very few people are saying like, be nice to yourself. Where you go to college, I swear to God, it doesn't really matter that much. I mean, yes, if you go to Harvard or Yale or one of those, Stanford, right? That will have a huge impact on your life. But if you don't go to one of those, it doesn't really matter that much. And even if you go to those, it doesn't matter that much. What matters is how you feel about yourself. What matters is how you look at yourself. What matters is you respecting yourself. And the thing is, you have to help yourself and you have to help each other. And that's where I'll leave you. Have a great one. Look out for yourself. Look out for each other. See you next time.