CHS is the largest public high school in the state with over 5,000 students enrolled. It offers 20 sports and has won the most Indiana state championships. There are 45 different courses a student can take in the performing arts and over 120 clubs and organizations to participate in.

As a senior, it’s easy to stop and wonder if I’ve actually taken full advantage of everything CHS has to offer. Nowhere else will all these opportunities rest in one place. But that might be the very problem. Every year over 5,000 students scramble for these given opportunities. The academic competition is intense and in order to keep up with the demands of college admissions, we fill our plate to the brim with extracurriculars while juggling SAT prep, balancing GPA and logging community service hours. More so than ever, there is an obligation for CHS graduates to grow up fast and have accomplished something significant before leaving for college.

This system that has allowed students the best possible opportunity has also left no room for imperfection. Our quicks must be scoured and glossed. We are flawless. Superhuman. Words like “average” or “normal” is not associated with us.

We are hardly seen as teenagers. Adults don’t see us as kids, they see us as thr future. Every student body president will eventually step in the oval office; every performance in theater, Academy Award winner, every “A” on a statistics test, a well-paid future at NASA.