My Journey Through Type One Diabetes

13. How Junior and Senior Year Ended my High School Career

Junior Year

Junior year was my best year of high school, because I had more freedom to choose classes, I quit choir and took up art classes instead, work was easier and last of all this was my first year with my brother also at high school. I loved having my brother at high school with me, I would drive us to school and back every day and I loved having company while in the car. This is also the year we got a lot closer, I do not really know what happened but we just became better friends for some reason. I also got to team caption for my bowling team which was awesome, it gave me a lot of confidence and we got a lot of new people to join which allowed me to have more friends. All in all this year was great, I still had not really thought about what I was going to do with my life and did not know where I wanted to go to college but was not really worried about it at the time.

For the colleges that at the time I thought I was going, I would only needed to take the ACT. Since I have T1D and phones are not allowed while taking the test (which I need my phone for my CGM) I got special permissions/ accommodations to get a room all by myself to test in. It was just me and the instructor in one normal sized classroom and if I needed to check my devices then we would pause the test and take the time to give myself insulin or if I needed would wait for my blood sugar to come up from being low. During the test I sat at a decent number the whole time which was good. In the end I did not get amazing test results but I also did not need top scores to get into the college I wanted to go to so I never took the test again.

In March is when Covid hit and my school went to online "learning" after a couple of week break. I say "learning" because I actually never learned anything but I did the work I that needed to be done to keep my good grades. Online learning ended up being a good thing for me mentally. I say this because not only did it allow me to raise a few grades that I was struggle to keep at a B but also allowed me to do all my school work during the day and then by three (which is when I would normally get out of school) I would be done with my school work. I was also able to sleep in till about nine or ten in the morning, plus I am a more introverted person so I read a LOT of books and just enjoyed my time at home. I also took a few months off of work because I do already have lung complications and did not know at the time if I was at even greater risk because of my diabetes. It was a nice break from work and also probably good I did not work because I used to work at a retirement home and retirement homes were breading grounds for Covid. I think the one down side for me was that since I was a Junior I lost out on a year of prom, but other than that Covid did not affect me too much.

(Please note that I know a lot of people went through a hard time during Covid and that it was not all peaches n' cream but these are the experiences I went through during this time. Please do not hate on me and I am sorry if you went through a hard time during Covid)

Senior Year

So basically I want to talk about two things from senior year how sucky it was and therapy.

First off senior year was sucky. My senior year was between 2021 and 2022 I point this out because everyone complained about the seniors last year who did not get a prom their senior year and yeah I am not saying that they did not have it rough but at least they were heading out of high school and not still stuck here. This school year was so bizarre because we had to wear masks all the time which was weird at first and then administration started cracking down on rules and made everything worse.

Then around the middle of the school year a couple of people got in a car accident that were in the same grade as I was in. One of them died but luckily the other survived, my mom told me the news over the weekend asking if I knew this person. I more knew of this person, I had had them in some of the classes I have had over the years and I was shocked at the news. It was truly awful so while this loomed over us the rest of the year other things were also happening.

Our school has to have the senior prank preapproved before it can take place and they rejected all but one of our ideas and so we were going to hand marbles to the principle when we got our graduation certificate but then that got canceled last minute and so there was no senior prank.

We were able to have prom but that ended up being pretty lame. There were also just a lot of school scandals going around at the time I cannot remember what all happened but it was not good, there was this whole school meeting about it and everything.

The last thing that was really prevalent from this year was how over I was about being at this school with all its drama and chaos. I was also so burnt-out with all the homework and social drama. I also started to notice that I did not fit in very well with my peers and it was starting to show up in my mental health, which leads me to the last thing I was to talk about: therapy.

Second of all I started therapy senior year. I realized that whenever I was at school I had this feeling of uneasiness, I felt it when I got to class early and no one else was there, or when everyone finally got there and I had no one to talk to, or when I was walking between classes in the super crowded halls. I had always felt like this but it seemed to intensify my senior year probably because of the stress I had with what I was going to do next in my life after high school. I felt like I was isolated more than usual this year and it seemed like I was talking less and less every day. Eventually it got to be too much and I thought that I was having panic attacks. I do think that I was having mild panic attacks but I never did anything about it and I honestly did not have the resources at the time to do anything about it. I talked to my mom about seeing a therapist at the end of third quarter. I realize now that the environments that I had myself in were what brought all this anxiety bubbling to the surface. School and work were two environments that gave me anxiety even just thinking about them. When I quit working there and got out of high school the majority of my anxiety left me and I am so thankful for that but therapy serious helped me along my way through the rest of high school and also helped me realize some other things about myself.

I am doing a lot better now and am thinking about only seeing my therapist once a month now! It makes me so happy to see how far I have come. If you are struggling right now just know that even if it does take awhile and you have to go through hell and back, it will be worth it.

Author's Note

Chapter Started: 6/28/2022 @12:30am

Chapter Ended: 12/14/2022 @11:24pm

Hey everyone! Sorry I have been sitting on this chapter for awhile but I started junior year and then lost all motivation to keep doing senior year, especially since it was a tough year for me. I also started school back up which made it even harder to work on chapters. This semester just ended for me though so I am hoping to write a couple chapters we will see.

Do any of you guys go to therapy? Also would you guys like another product chapter? I recently got the new omnipod 5 so I would just be sharing how that has been going.

I know everyone goes through their own challenges with T1D so please no hating on me or anyone else, thanks!