Dear Brother, As You Begin High School, Remember This
Dear Riley,
Congratulations! You’ve survived middle school and made it to freshman year. In my experience, childhood’s infamous cruelties, self doubt, and politicking were worst in eighth grade, so it only gets better from here. Welcome to high school!
Your daily schedule won’t change much. You’ll still wake up early to go sit in a classroom, select from a limited range of electives and extracurricular activities, and socialize with the same pool of people day in and day out. It’s not a big step away from what you know — but it is the first step into a wider world.
In addition to your old friends, you have hundreds of new classmates, drawn from multiple schools you’ve heard of but never seen, located just across the railroad tracks but exotic and new nonetheless. Your campus is large, with dedicated facilities both sporting and educational and endless nooks and crannies to lunch in. There are dozens of teams, classes, and clubs dedicated to developing any interest you may harbor. Your world has grown, and it will take years to plumb its depths.
I navigated these same waters as the hapless first child, with nothing but the wishes of our dear parents as guidance. I regret little, but there are still things I wish I knew and things I could have done differently.
I would like to share these things with you, both as an elder brother and as a friend. I don’t presume to know all the secrets of high school at the ripe age of 25, but I have been there, done that and had a few years since to gain perspective on the experience. I daresay some of the truths I learned carry well into the world beyond high school.
Here’s what I wish I knew, in short and then at length:
1) Popularity Sucks, Friends Rule
2) Recognize Your Privilege
3) Ace Extracurriculars, not Classes
4) Sample Everything
5) Treasure Your Youth
1) Popularity Sucks, Friends Rule
Popular culture loves idolizing the American high school social scene. From cheerleaders to football players to mathletes, we all know how that story goes. Your time probably won’t resemble this (especially at Gunn High School) but much of the characters and social dynamics may be the same.
You’ll make new friends and lose old ones. You’ll have arguments, fall for the same girl, experience rivalries. Your friend group at the end of the four years probably won’t look the same as when you started.
Some of your friendships will become lifelong bonds, and others mere memories, but all will be valuable. Many of your fellow teenagers are struggling for acceptance, just as you are, which means not everyone is making conscious choices about who they want to spend time with.
So what should you do about it?
Make friends, but don’t pursue popularity. Popularity’s promises are bittersweet, and its sorrows cruel. Its victories are fleeting and its failures are crushing — although in the end both are short-lived. None of the gains you make in the Game of Popularity matter outside of your high school.
The Game of Friendships doesn’t require winning or losing. Any friendship, no matter how fleeting, is a win for both players. As a result, you should be friendly towards all, and find who you truly warm up to. Develop what you like about yourself rather than shaping yourself to fit the likes of others. It’s easier said than done, but discovering inner self-worth is the most valuable skill you can build — and unlike popularity, it will help you for the rest of your life.
It may seem like the end of the world if your crush dances with someone else, or you don’t make the starting set on the water polo team, or get left off the theatre kids’ party list. I’ve been there. It’s not.
My friends from high school that I still see? That social group didn’t exist until senior year. So don’t be discouraged when you can’t find friends at first — keep broadcasting you, and the BFFs will come.
A note on substances — many people discover mind-altering substances in high school. It’s up to you to make that choice when you face it. It’s not as bad as your parents say, and not as fun as your friends say. Stand up for your principles, and be smart.
2) Recognize Your Privilege
Palo Alto is a bubble. It is quintessential suburbia, as a clean, spacious, and safe place to have kids. So it’s no wonder that it resembles, as Paul Graham puts it, “a giant nursery, an artificial town created explicitly for the purpose of breeding children.” Every time I visit home I am struck by how clean, sunny, and green the town is. Even forty minutes north, my new home of San Francisco is none of those things.
So Palo Alto is special, as a pleasant place to be. But it is also exceptional in both minds and money, nestled next to Stanford University and Sand Hill Road as it is. This is not a bad thing — and indeed, it will make your time there that much more interesting — but it is something you should recognize.
The world outside is not as clean, spacious, affluent, or intelligent. The bubble shelters, but the bubble also blinds. Enjoy the fruits of the situation, but stay mindful of the downsides. Appreciate what you have, while recognizing that others don’t have it.
I’m not sure I was truly aware of the rest of the world, growing up. I visited a few foreign cities with the family, and I played water polo against teams from other towns, but that’s it. I spent the majority of high school in between two freeway exits, with the same group of people, all striving for the same things. It wasn’t real life — for better or for worse.
It’s easy to let your local culture dictate your truths and take them for granted. It’s harder to look at your lifestyle with an objective eye, and purposefully decide which norms you accept and which you reject.
I think you’ve realized by now that not every town is filled with Priuses, Teslas, and hoverboards, and all that they represent. Not every main street sells 3D printed selfies, vegan frozen yogurt, and telecommuting robots.
Once you’re aware, their presence becomes that much more special. Everyone loves to hear my stories about growing up in Silicon Valley, but to me, it was all I knew! You don’t have to be the same.
Read books — both fiction and nonfiction. Watch documentaries. Trawl the web beyond Reddit and Facebook. Spend time with people from other places, ages, and backgrounds — understand where they’re coming from and compare their reality with yours.
Gunn has a healthy supply of foreign students due to visiting Stanford professors and Silicon Valley immigrants — find them for a start!
3) Ace Extracurriculars, not Classes
I remember making fun of my fellow seniors who opted out of college. But now I realize I hadn’t considered any other option! Whether you should go to college is another blog post entirely, but speaking with knowledge of our family, I know that you’re going to college. So this point is with admissions in mind — but it’s good advice no matter what your next steps are.
Grades will never be more important than they are right now. But don’t mistake them for the end goal. Your goal isn’t to get As — it’s to learn how to learn, determine your aptitudes, and to look good for college admissions.
Your grades will never make you stand out. No matter how many AP classes you take (and you should take a few, weighted as they are), you will never shine that way. There will always be others with better grades, from schools that allow more APs, or from families for whom Bs are punished. Aim for As, be content with Bs, and avoid Cs if you can, but put in 80% of the work and leave the A+s for perfectionists.
What admissions want are extracurriculars. And not just a buffet of generic extracurriculars strategically picked across disciplines to look good, but activities that demonstrate genuine interest, skill development, and personal leadership. Find ways to pursue your interests that look good on paper (whether via recommendations, creative work, or accolades), rather than thinking about what would look the best.
Be the Most Improved Player, not the Most Valuable Player.
I wish I had known this back then. I wish I had done fewer sports in high school. I was on all the teams — lacrosse, water polo, wrestling. A sport for every season. And while I had a great time exercising with friends and participating in teams, I never truly cared about the game. I was an athlete because that’s what was expected of me. What do those skills do for me now?
If I had been conscious enough to choose back then, I’d have pursued my nascent interests in debate, theatre, or choir. Those skills remain valuable outside the sports pitch, and probably would have been more fun or social than conditioning laps day after day.
You should fill your afternoons with something before going home. But choose them wisely, and don’t fall into the ‘I’m doing sports because I’m athletic’ trap that I did. Besides, you have so many options to choose from!
4) Sample Everything
Teams, clubs, scholarships, teachers, electives — you can try anything. The only time you’ll ever have more resources bent toward your free time will be in college.
I took a few classes in high school just to try them out, and loved it. I still have the bronze sculpture I smelted in sculpture class. I still have the glass flower I made in glass blowing class at the rival high school. I remember the principles of photoshop from Graphic Design, and the Greek pantheon from mythology class. And that’s just scratching the surface of what was offered.
So sample away. Try anything and everything that interests you. Don’t stick to one thing year after year unless you truly love it. You seem to love theatre — so jump into that as soon as possible and ride it for as long as it provides value to you. It’ll never be easier than it is now.
I recently explored my curiosity for theater with an Improv 101 class. It was fantastic! But it cost hundreds of dollars, it took up all my free time on Wednesdays for three months, and it was with strangers I’ll never see again.
High school opportunities are free, end before dark, and are with classmates you’ll see again! You don’t know how special that is…
5) Treasure Your Youth
The older I get, the more cliches prove to be true. Youth is wasted on the young, listen to your elders, teenage years are the best and the worst, blah blah blah.
They’re all correct! You’re entering the prime of your life right now, and you have more time, energy, and opportunity than you know.
Look at my life. Who’s more free — you or me?
It’s true I can move anywhere I want to, and can do whatever I want in my free time that’s not illegal. You’re stuck at home, and have to listen to Dad. But you have more free time, and the family takes care of your basic needs. There’s dozens of startup companies devoted to doing the things that Mom does for free right now.
You’ll soon share my position — but I’ll never return to yours. You’re freer than you know.
Here’s one last platitude — time is only wasted when you wish you’re spending it elsewhere. Luckily, it has an easy solution — be mindful. Do things for reasons, and be present in every moment. This is the undercurrent behind every bullet point in this essay.
My only regret in youth was my lack of mindfulness. I did things back then for popularity, for admissions officers, for my parents — but seldom for me. Safe to say I didn’t know who I was and most high school freshmen don’t either. You’re no different.
But you can know that you don’t know, and this is the first step on any path towards wisdom. You can make choices strategically and design experiments, rather than blundering forward on the advice of others or hunches. There’s no better time to start your journey of self discovery.
Every step you take will be on this journey, and the rules won’t change. The advice I’ve given here is still relevant for me today.
Find friends, not popularity. Gain perspective. Find meaning outside the classroom (or office). Try everything. Treasure every moment.
I’m excited to see who you become. To what comes next!
With love from your brother, Corey
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