I’ve just finished the busiest summer of my life.

With working two jobs and babysitting on the side, I’m finally ready for an easy senior year. I purposefully dumbed my classes down to be palatable for my senior year schedule.

I know where and what I want to go to college for. I applied to KU in July and got in five days later. I’m going to major in multimedia journalism, and become a part of the student newspaper and radio station.

I have it all figured out.

I have a roommate and a theme for our dorm. I have a plan for my job and I have friends that already go there. 

So what is there to be stressed out about?

On the first day of senior year, I’m sitting at my new lunch table. I finish shaking my salad and place it down on the white table.There’s no need for awkward small talk, because I was sitting next to one of my close friends. 

“So… Do you have a homecoming dress picked out?”

I hear the screech of the brakes in my brain. 

It’s Aug. 12. Homecoming isn’t until Oct. 11.

I don’t even know who’s going to be in my next class. It’s that early in the school year.

Purple, pink, blue and red.

What color should my dress be?

I know my face is green.

I casually reply with, “Uh, no, not yet.”

My brain switches from the brakes and slams on the gas.

Should I be worried about my dress color this early?

Does everyone else have a dress already?

What group am I gonna go with?

Which boy am I gonna go with?

Will I even have a date this year?

By the 20th bullet point of all-consuming questions — my brain suddenly becomes green goop. The goop is sticky and swallows me whole. It’s too opaque that I can’t see a way through it. The goop starts to wash away any sense of self I ever had. Now — nothing is more important than the matching jewelry sets and new accent high heels I’ll need to get. Nothing will ever get done because I will be consumed with who’s going to what after party, and what cheetah print top I’m going to wear in someone’s finished basement. I sink deeper and deeper into the brain matter of overwhelmedness. 

By the time I find a dress, make reservations, buy a corsage, try to lose weight and find an after-party, it’ll already be time to worry about the Sweetheart dance. And then the playoff football games, and then the Not So Late Night assembly. 

It’s exhausting always being followed by events and their 20 contingencies. Every event is required to include one “what are you wearing” text, at least 10 pictures with the four people you came with, two TikToks, and ice cream afterward. It’s like the 12 Days of Christmas song. Except the nine ladies dancing are from the 10 minutes you’re at homecoming, before you realize you don’t want to spend your Saturday night surrounded by sweaty 15-year-old boys in the school cafeteria. 

By the second week of school the new topic of interest is spring break trips. I feel the green goop rising up again. But this time it’s crawling my throat. All of this is just coming so fast, at full speed. Which is what any adult in my life has always said, at any family function, where uncomfortable surface level conversations are required. 

“Senior year will fly by” they say. 

I can only hope it will go by as fast as people say it will. It’s not that I hate highschool, or that drama follows me or that I have no friends. It’s just that there’s always something. But maybe it’s better to be busy than bored.