Lessons I Learned in High School: Everything is a Lesson

By Danika, TeenSource Blogger

Well, it seems our time together has come to an end. It’s been real. It’s been fun. It’s been real fun, but it’s time for me to bid you all adieu. And so I present my final blog, my lesson of all lessons(!):

You will go through so many changes throughout high school, and have so many experiences, that by the end of it you might not even believe how much you’ve grown in such a short amount of time. And something that aids us in that growth is the choices we make and the lessons we take away from them. 

I fell in love in high school with a (very stupid) boy. I also got my heart broken. I definitely was not the only one. All of my friends, and the majority of people in my high school, went through this. We all got our hearts broken. It’s pretty much a rite of passage. But after that relationship, I walked away knowing a little more about myself and what I wanted. For some of my friends, that meant someone who wasn’t emotionally abusive, someone who wouldn’t pressure them into doing things they didn’t want to do, or just someone who was overall more loving in general. Whatever the matter, they grew from their experiences.

I knew people who never thought to get tested and then finally ended up finding out they had STDs. I had friends who forgot to use condoms and panicked asking me to help them get Plan B. I also had friends who were too nervous to even get any emergency contraception and ended up getting pregnant. This was not the end of the world for any of them. Finding out that you have an STD can be a scary experience, but it’s also a chance to learn how to not get them the next time! The panic that comes the day after forgetting to use a condom can be a wake-up call to start taking better precautions. Becoming a teen mother is a life-changing experience that will redefine your entire world, and there’s definitely no way you wouldn't grow from that.

While it would be fantastic if we could all know the perfect choices to make beforehand, that is almost impossible. But they’re nothing to be ashamed of. The choices we make throughout our life, as I’ve continuously pointed out, are chances to learn and to grow.

One of the greatest things I ever learned in high school was that in the end, there are no mistakes, only lessons. Take advantage of every single experience that comes to you, make the most of it, and see what you can take and learn from it.