When you get to middle school ...

I never write in cursive.

My elementary school teachers promised, “When you get to middle school, you’ll have to use cursive.” However, my teachers later on generally preferred print, for the sake of legibility.

In middle school, my teachers warned, “You might get away with turning in late homework now, but when you get to high school, you won’t be able too.”

But to my surprise, late papers were often accepted by my high school teachers.

In high school, the teachers preached, “When you get to college, nobody will make you go to class, and your whole grade will be based on a couple of tests and a term paper.”

They used to talk about giant classes and professors who don’t know your name.

Yet again, I encountered none of these when I actually stepped onto campus. None of my classes have been larger than those in high school, and absences often have negative grade consequences. My professors know my name and often much more.

Why do we spend so much time anxiously anticipating the next stage of our educational careers and not focusing on the present one?

High school students today now spend more time thinking about college than high school. College application deadlines have kept up with presidential primary elections, creeping ever earlier in the year. Students incorrectly think applying early significantly increases their chances of admission and rush to apply.

As soon as students hit high school, the college admissions test game begins. Schools that desperately need to boost test scores drive teachers to incorporate test prep from day one.

Freshmen receive SAT vocabulary lists, practicing for a test they won’t take for another two or three years. Juniors take the PSAT, locking in their eligibility for National Merit Scholarships almost two years before their first college class.

But now we’ve made it. We’ve reached the promised land of college, and the rat race is behind us. Right?

Wrong. The pre-med crows start gearing up for the MCAT with freshman biology. Business majors practice mock presentations and start thinking about internships and networking. Even humanities departments bill their programs as resume builders. 

Science majors get into labs to get research experience. The most ambitious begin taking graduate courses early or do multiple majors just for the sake of it.

Instead of living in the next stage of the game, instead of trying to be somewhere we’re not, let’s chill.

Let’s just live here, at this time and place, for a while and not in the future. We spent four years prepping and jockeying to get here. Let’s not anticipate so much we forget where we are now.  


E-mail: brownjoh@indiana.edu