Tomorrow I finish Year 12. Just like that. The end of 13 years, an entire era of my life. The end of my compulsory schooling.
It's an exciting time. Most of my friends are like "Yes! No more school!" But I'm of two minds. Sure, it's exciting, but I'm also really sad about it, and just a little bit scared. I'm only 17, and I've been at school 5 days a week for 13 years, with only a small amount of time of, always knowing that I'll go back.
And I like school. I get bored during the longer holidays. I end up wishing for some sort of assignment to do, to see my friends everyday, just through the neccessity of attending each day.
Sure, there's university, but it's not the same. Primary school, high school and college are all sort of linked. They have a similar sort of system, with only minor changes - you stay in the same class with the same teacher, you move to different classes with different teachers, you get more freedom, time off, more choice in classes. Even with all those differences, there's a very similar underlying principal - you go to school everyday and spent all or most of the day in classes.
From everything I've heard, university is completely different. All of the comparative similarity that made the transitions between earlier schooling eaier are gone. I'm finishing something familiar and moving into the great unknown.
Half of my friends are going elsewhere. My best friend is even hoping to move to a different city. Last time I moved schools, from high school to college, half of my friends went to a different school. There were the friends that I sat with every day, and I ended up having almost nothing to do with them, and becoming a lot closer with more distant friends. I'm scared the same thing will happen again.
I'm happy, I'm sad, I'm exited, and I'm scared. I'm unsure about the future, and I have my final exam at 11:30 tomorrow. An hour and a half of biology left, after 13 years.
