Those who know me well know I’m the king of “crashing out.”

I spent much of high school selfishly locked up in Silent Study, freaking out over round decisions at debate tournaments and publicly declaring my anxiety over whether an arbitrary Ivy League admissions team would deem me a “holistic candidate.” I have a reputation for “tweaking” over Advanced Placement (AP) Latin memorization, important music auditions, my competitive Valorant rank, the next one-hundredth decimal on my grade point average — all of the above and everything in between. Believe it or not, since it’s currently the last hour of Chronicle layout and I’m barely beginning to write this, I may as well “crash out” one last time as I struggle to meet this deadline.

I may be an extreme archetype for someone who “crashes out,” but at a place like Harvard-Westlake — a community where we’re expected to have bright, dazzling and rich futures — we all have an inner desire to “crash out” every now and then. It’s the pressure we put on ourselves for being privileged young people with virtually limitless opportunity — we are pushed to “dream bigger”, take our lives seriously and never settle for less.

That’s not a terrible motto, and it’s classic motivation for “locking in.” Whether I learned that from going to an elite private school or growing up in an Asian household, I followed it religiously for the last six years, putting every foot forward to maximize my awards and achievements. But as a second-semester senior who now spends most of my life scrolling through old photos and reminiscing about memories from cohorts in eighth grade, I can’t care less about all those tiny, irrelevant things I once crashed out about on the daily. Perhaps there wasn’t too big of a difference between second and first place, a 92.4 and an A, a slightly flawed or a perfect violin performance. Perhaps Mr. Nealis was right: it was all going to turn out fine; I just needed to press the “I Believe” button.

So to all those who may be desiring a “crash out” — and to myself next fall — here’s my two cents of junk teenage wisdom. Truth is, when I look back on my “worst” moments of high school, I don’t recall many of those overwhelming feelings of “stress.” I just smile at those hilarious AP Chemistry classes with Ms. Park, the way we all looked after taking Ms. Campbell’s Unit 4 Honors Precalculus test or the time we all got up at 4 a.m. to float down a river on ninth grade retreat. My grades on those tests, my terrible physical condition on that canoe, the stress of receiving my grade sheets at the end of junior year — all that nonsense almost means nothing to me now. Even college, which encompassed 99% of my being just a couple of months ago, barely crosses my mind now. To the juniors reading this — those stuck in the darkest hours of high school — I promise you that a year from now, those fleeting moments of anger, stress and anxiety won’t mean much to you at all. Before you know it, high school will leave you forever, and you’ll realize how needless that “crash out” was.