October is ending. The first two months of school have come and gone. Our biological clocks have all reset to school time, and our identities are again defined by our GPAs and our grades. Today, tomorrow, and the day after that should all just feel like days. But strangely, they don’t feel that way to me. I’m a senior now, and for the first time in my invincible young life, every day that passes feels like a day I’ll never get back (and no, that’s not just because I’ve slept through every single one of my second periods so far).

    Pretty soon, I’ll be legally an adult, and I’ll actually have to do adult things. But I don’t feel like an adult. I barely feel like a high schooler. Part of me still feels like I’m a freshman taking on my first day in some sick time loop — terrified, mystified, and a little hungry. I know that as a senior, I shouldn’t be scared anymore, but high school is scary. High schoolers are scary. But the scariest thing is the face of a future I’m completely unprepared for.

    If you know me, you know that I’m a total loser, and I completely lied about sleeping through my second period AP Physics class to seem cooler and less nerdy than I actually am (Slacking is what the cool and hip kids do these days, right?). You would also know that I’ve done exactly zero of the things high schoolers do in movies. If starting food fights, sending an embarrassing text to the entire school, and breaking out into song in the middle of lunch were requirements for graduation, I’d probably never graduate.

   But seriously, I’ve never been to a house party, or gotten drunk, or even dated anyone. (It’s kind of embarrassing to admit that, but if you can’t trust a column written by a seventeen year old girl, what kind of news can you trust?) It’s like there’s this train heading to Real High Schooler Town that everyone’s already gotten on, and I’ve completely missed it. Time’s running out, and I don’t think there’s another train coming for me.

   But strangely, I’ve accepted it. I’m probably not as far behind as I seem, and if I am, who cares? My life is a heart-wrenching, Oscar-winning drama, not a bad high school movie where every single cheerleader is Satan incarnate. Even if, somehow, we’re all stuck in the worst high school movie ever, I’m okay with that. Every character in a terrible high school movie has their place, and maybe my place is being the one that’s cool with embarrassing herself every month because she’s so desperate for attention she reveals her life story in a high school newspaper. (Would that be considered a comic relief character archetype? Do they even have a name for this? If they do, can I get that on a t-shirt?)

   If you expected a serious business column like those present last year, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Sure, I will talk about something that actually matters every once in awhile, but in this crazy, mixed up world, sometimes all you need to do is sit down and laugh at the girl in the newspaper. I want to be that girl. I’m proud that I can be that girl.