Things we wish we knew in school

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
- Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was not wrong when he said that above quote cited above. We indeed make a lot of mistakes and sometimes the best way to cope with it, is to shrug our shoulders and say, “oh well, it was a good experience.” Or better yet, “we need to experience everything in life – even if it’s bitter and bad.” Honestly, that’s just a coping mechanism.

Don’t you often wish you could go back to your past self and tell them not to worry about certain things? For example, the past you who went to school! Don’t you wish you could go back now and tell yourself certain things that you wish you had known in school?

One of the chief things you would probably tell your teenage self is to give studies the little more than average priority. Sure, grades will actually not matter in the tests of real life but it will come in handy, when you are applying for a prestigious college. But making it a top priority and neglecting the other aspects of your life – that will be downright ridiculous.

Psychologists say that if a friendship survives seven years then it will last forever. Guess where most of us have picked our forever friends from? That’s right – school. Instead of spending every spare minute studying, you would probably benefit more if you just spoke to the girl who sat next to you, or that guy who sits in the last bench, stares sulkily out of the window and refuses to speak to anyone. Who knows? You could start the friendship of a lifetime.

Another thing we desperately wish we knew in school was to fall head over heels in love. It is true love can happen at any given age, but it’s also true that what teenagers tag as ‘love’ is nothing but crushes. Sometimes it is right next to nerve breaking watching the love of your life flirt with someone else. But honestly, he is rightfully just the ‘crush’ of your life. If you could rewind your life, wouldn’t you want to take back all those days you spent crying because your crush didn’t acknowledge your presence? Or you spent your whole day in a bad mood because your crush said ‘hi’ to your friend and not you? Of course, the happier side of it is the times, when your crush is nice to you. But that happens one out of ten times…

Lastly, what we all must secretly have wanted to know at school, would have been to simply be grateful for some of the best days of our lives. No one seems to realize that until the final year and then when you are supposed to be saying goodbye, you want just another minute, another hour, and sometimes another year. Because you have finally realized how wonderful the journey of school really was and you want to do it right this time.

Time doesn’t slow down for anyone. So maybe we are a little late in knowing what we should have known in school, but doesn’t change the fact we didn’t enjoy our time there. After all, being in school certainly was one of the greatest experiences of our lives. That’s where we realized what we wanted to be when we grew up, made our closest friends, had the silliest fights with our ‘enemies’ and above all, learned to have fun.

Swarnali Das