When the day is done and the lights are out, you’re still up. Everyone has long been asleep, the house is quiet, you’re wide awake thinking.

The thoughts that haunt you late at night are tasks that aren’t complete from the previous day: the incomplete homework that is screaming your name, ]the trash that your mom asked you to take out earlier, or the laundry that you should’ve put away three days ago. All of the voices of the incomplete tasks keep calling your name. While the thoughts are swirling around in your head, you realize the inordinate pressure that everyone puts on you.

As a high schooler, you experience pressure in different ways. Pressure to do the best that you can without over-extending yourself. Pressure to make everyone feel included. Pressure to create a legacy for yourself in the school or community. After it becomes too much, you cave into it and guilt consumes you.

Lying awake thinking about what you could’ve done differently darkness, the guilt engulfs you. It makes you question what you should’ve done differently. What if that weird conversation that you had with someone didn’t go as good as you thought? What if you had taken a different route to school; maybe you might not have been late to your first class? What if you didn’t have the friends that you have, would you a different person?

Consequently, each night animosity surrounds you as the uncertainty sets in: the uncertainty of what college you’re going to, any noise that seems out of the ordinary and random lights of cars going down the street at 1 a.m.

Lately, I haven’t been able to sleep because it feels like when the world is quiet, my mind isn’t. As soon as I lay down to go to bed, something pops in my head and keeps me awake. Whether that is the confusion on what college to attend next, what state I’m going to live in, or the homework that isn’t done.

Each day, the problems seem to grow a little at a time until they seem too big to handle. No matter how much I try to ignore them, they keep showing up. Until the problems take over the night and I can’t sleep. It just seems like senior year I have been losing more sleep over the little problems; almost like the pressure is too much.

Eventually, while everything is still waves of uncertainty and the pressure crashes in.

As students, especially seniors, there is a lot of uncertainty and doubt everyday. But remember that you can’t act on every uncertainty you have that keeps you up. If you could fix the ambiguity it wouldn’t help because you aren’t a superhero and you can’t fix the problems that you have in one night.

Maybe then, when the day is done and the lights are out, you can sleep. When the house is quiet and everyone is asleep, you are too.