"The best years of your life" are so quickly transforming into the years from hell. Your peers are watching your every move, listening to every word eminating from your mouth, judging how you dress, and who you are. The adults are pressuring you to do this, and be that, as they scrutinize every move you make.

You're caught between pleasing your peers, living up to the expectations of the adults around you, and trying to stay true to yourself.

It is one of the most emotionally draining and psychologically tormenting periods that people ever have to endure. Colleges are closely examining everything about you, teachers are constantly on your back to be better, peers are telling you to shrug it all off. Meanwhile, you spend hours completing tedious assignments and studying until all hours of the morning for tests, and your extra curricular activities take up all your other time. The sleep deficiency is beginning to break you down. But remember. . . THESE ARE THE BEST YEARS OF YOUR LIFE!

Yes, now that my tyraid is over, I must say that despite these constant ups and downs, I am finding myself more and more involved in school clubs and sports, and also more engaged in my studies. Everything is becoming more and more interesting. I never thought I would care about alien species, or covalent bonds, and I definitely never expected to think twice about the political problems in Argentina. Oh, and meningitis, that's one of those things I never thought about until class. I never second guessed any of the word choices of Voltaire or Victor Hugo, but I am beginning to see that there is soooo much more to life that thinking about the crappy situation we endure during our teenage years. And it truly does freak me out when I find myself surfing the web, looking for further information on the uneven distribution of food throughout the world's populations. But there is some pleasure in all of this, which definitely helps counter the constant criticism and scrutiny we put up with from everyone around us.

The choice truly is yours to make. These can really be the best years of your life, or they can be the years from hell.