Grads’ reflections on the high school experience

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/06/2025 (362 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Grade 12 students, before graduation, enter a period of reflection; we reflect on what aspects of our high school experience we enjoyed, and what aspects we didn’t. We think about our accomplishments and what we wish we had done differently. We think about who we were four years ago and who we are now, and we sometimes can’t help ourselves from wishing we could go back and give our younger selves some advice. We can’t, of course, and that’s life — but if we could, what would we say?

Arden Hebert

As my final year of high school gets closer to its end, I’ve been thinking more and more about the version of me that was preparing to start high school four years ago. She was nervous but excited and very, very concerned about university. In the summer leading up to the fall of 2021, I took online courses and read books and researched universities almost obsessively; I would be lying if I said I didn’t lose sleep over the thought of university applications. I worried about majors and extracurriculars, and I don’t think I hung out with a single friend that summer. If I could give that version of me one piece of advice, it would be, “Relax. So much growth and change will happen in the coming four years, and it’s likely that whatever you want to do at the beginning of high school won’t be what you leave high school wanting to do, so there is no use wasting time stressing over it.” I would sit her down and try my best to convince her of just how much time she really has. I’d remind her that she’ll only be 21 years old at her university graduation and, yes, this might be hard to believe at 14, but that is extremely young. “Picking a university and a major can feel like making a life-changing decision but, even after completing this next huge step, your whole life will still be ahead of you,” I would advise myself. “This isn’t to say you shouldn’t be considerate of course, it’s just to say that you shouldn’t be losing sleep over it. And if I’m not losing sleep over it as a high school student about to graduate, you definitely shouldn’t be before you even get here.”

There exists a heavy pressure that weighs down on high school students that makes us feel like we need to have our whole life planned out, and for every second we don’t, we fall further and further behind. If you’re lucky, you’ll realize how untrue that is sooner rather than later. So, if I could give anyone — starting high school or otherwise — advice, I would say, “You aren’t behind, you have time, so take it.”

Tatiana Dupuis

Whoever said “enjoy your high school years, they’ll fly by so fast” was right and I hate to say it. I can promise when I first got here, I was not ready for a single thing that was thrown at me. I’m leaving high school with a whole new version of myself; one I could never have imagined. I truly know what life has to offer now more than ever. Leaving this place, where there was such a routine along with ups and downs, will be an inevitable change. I never imagined getting to the point in my life where I am graduating from a high school I never considered going to, with friends I never imagined I could have along with me. To me, graduation is a new beginning to our lives. A beginning where we can’t see the finish line. Looking back to that starting line, I wish I could take all her worries away. Worries that I couldn’t even tell you what they were. A harsh reality I wish someone had told me earlier is, “Life is what you make it to be.” In the real world outside of high school there is no one catching you when you fall or picking you back up when you do. The reality of it all is, “You’re on your own kid.”

There’s a common misconception that being a good student — or even a good person — means having perfect grades and flawless attendance. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. What truly defines your character isn’t your test scores or your perfect attendance; it’s the effort you put into what matters to you, the way you treat others, and the way a person faces challenges. Over the past four years, I’ve learned that success looks different for everyone. I may not have made the honour roll every year, but that didn’t stop me from working hard at everything I worked for in my life. What mattered to me was that I found meaning in the things that couldn’t be measured by my grades: volunteering in my community, building relationships with the people around me, and working all throughout high school. These experiences taught me discipline, empathy and the value of giving back. They reminded me that learning doesn’t just happen in a classroom — it happens when we step outside the bubbles we hide in for so long and choose to open ourselves to the world around us.

Together as we end our high school journeys, we can now look back and see what we couldn’t for so long. The unknown — the “what’s next?” — we won’t ever be able to go back to that time in our lives where we had sleepless nights worrying about what university applications will look like or how we did on that test, but what we can say is we are at a point in our lives where we will continue to keep growing and discovering more and more who we are, with our accomplishments and our regrets. That is something our 14-year-old selves couldn’t even imagine. With the endless help and support from our teachers and peers, we couldn’t imagine a better way to close this chapter and to begin a new one.

» Tatiana Dupuis and Arden Hebert are Grade 12 students at École secondaire Neelin High School.