I can’t live to tell you the overall, general experience of a typical high school student in the year 2023. I am what it seems is the epitome of diversity: the black, bisexual, muslim, immigrant, hijabi woman who lives in a predominantly white city state that mirrors the rest of society. I only can tell the tale that is mine.
It feels as though the canon events that are the high school experience have completely skipped over me. It’s not the only reason I believe that the lasting aspects of my character define my course of life and the current life I live. Going to a high school that so outwardly reflects the state of American society has proved to be challenging. The challenging aspects of school not only include the typical responsibilities; the difficult school work, climbing up the ladder in extracurriculars, balancing school, work and extracurriculars, but also stepping into the role of an absent parent in a household, and finding where I lie in the spectrum that is my American identity and my ethnic one.
High School in 2023 has exhibited a series of struggles that seem to affect my everyday life. The biggest one I face is my diagnosis of chronic migraines that seems all but livable. It’s a condition not serious enough to obtain adjustments, but also not minor enough to ignore. It’s a struggle every day as I deal with light, sound, and bass sensitivity that affects the condition in which I perform my duties.
High School in 2023 has students faced with much more than just the academics, but so many other societal and political controversies around us. We’re living through the ages of the progressive times in our stage of life that we’re supposed to be discovering ourselves and making the hardest decision on where we want to be next and the mark we’d like to make on the world.