There’s nothing wrong with being involved, until you’re too involved.

As a senior, I knew that I’d want to make my last moments of high school everything I thought they could be.  So I signed up for the classes I needed, the clubs I wanted to be involved in, the teams I needed to be on, and started planning my weekends with friends accordingly.

Everything was going great. Until I had to make it through my first month of school with a total of seven off-mods, four AP classes, practice after school, and a shift at work every now and then.

Every night I go home from practice and race to eat so that I can stay up past midnight doing homework and studying.  The next morning, I leave my house at 7 a.m. so I can get to school early to talk to teachers or go to meetings.

Even after school, I’m busy. I’m constantly rushing to the locker room because my teachers have to talk to me before I can go to practice.  I’m never still.

So why all the hustle?  It’s not like the world will end if I take a breath.  Or will it?

The idea that senior year is going to be a breeze has been long dead in its grave.  The competition to get into college has become so intense that a high school student practically has to start planning what his or her major will be four years in advance.

College is no longer the paradise that high school students escape to when they are sick of their parents and ready to do their own things.  College is a place to prepare you to compete for the few jobs in this economy.

But this is not what I want my focus of senior year to be.  I don’t do all of these things purely for the satisfaction for having a meaty college application to send in.   Every single activity and class and event that I sign myself up for is a decision made out of the fear of missing something.

I’m doing all of the things that I do because I want to.  That’s what’s important about being in high school.  You should do what you want and pursue what you can while it’s still available to you.

You have four or more years of college to let your parents tell you that the advanced yoga class doesn’t fit into what your pre-med major.  So go ahead.  You join the yoga club and make sure that you get every last benefit of that stress reducer.

The country is in frenzy about the lack of jobs in the market and the economy.  And usually, it would be in character for me to advise everyone to step up and take some sort of action in bettering this situation.

But looking at it now, and seeing that I’m not entirely interested in political debate or paying bills, I think that I’ll leave the panic of economics to economists.  Instead I’ll just make sure I have five dollars to top off my gas tank every few days.

So I’m just going to remember what Ferris Bueller, the master of high school life, said, “Life moves pretty fast.  If you don’t stop to look around every once in a while, you could miss it.”

Allison Siegel can be reached for comment at [email protected].