High School

At the subtle age of a teenager, you are graduated from the somewhat small pool that is primary school and are thrown into the bigger pool which we call high school.

When you arrive at high school, during what may be a fragile time of your life, you will be confronted by all new personalities, temptations and responsibilities.

With these new ways or experiences, I observed that there are only three ways to to survive high school and all its troubles.

The first yellow brick road to survival is the method that always seemed to amaze me. This method is the one that most teenagers take and that is to grow way before their years.

This is when a teenager can’t wait long enough to be an adult and just thinks “I’m going to have all the adult fun right now”.

This includes drinking, smoking and doing drugs while being underage. Aside from all the obvious problems with this method eg. lung cancer and alcohol abuse, there is the fact that these teenagers make their future lives a bit difficult and boring for themselves.

Which raises the question ‘when you grow older, what are you going to do for fun?’

The second pale-yellowish brick road to survival is the most appealing but also the most dangerous method.

This is when a teenager lives in an imaginary dream world of unicorns, ‘Ben 10’ and petty rivalries. These teenagers are the ones that don’t want to grow up and act like three-year-olds all the time.

I usually see this behaviour in rich and spoiled children. Also, these teenagers don’t have the mature ability to tolerate other people’s opinions, traditions and/or culture so of course, they’re a pain to be around.

These teenagers also are at risk when they become adults, when their mother and father aren’t around to help them with their problems, it means they have to start working and thinking for themselves.

Which is a great disadvantage for them because everyone else had a head start.

Lastly, the final golden road to survival is the most rare method that most teenagers find hard to master. The teenagers that have mastered this method are the ones that know when to act the right way at the right time.

They have a perfect balance between staying young and growing old. Usually mistaken as ‘goody-two-shoes’ and ‘Debbie-Downer’ when you suggest something stupid, they are the first to point out why you shouldn’t do it.

They manage to maintain good grades and are the people your parents point out and use as an example of the ‘perfect’ child.

They say birds of a feather flock together. So take a look around. Where do your friends fit into this? Because it’s more likely than not that you’re just like them.

Tangeni Thomas is a Grade 10 pupil at Windhoek Gymnasium. She enjoys reading books and writing short stories.