By Brooke Bullington

As a senior in high school, my priorities have essentially been set for me; I’m expected to care about certain things: grades and college apps, friends and sports teams, and of course the CoA. Subsequently, I must care about Menlo; it is my last chance to genuinely appreciate my final year at a school that has provided me with seven years of nothing but life-changing opportunities. It’s supposed to be one of the best years of my life – time to bond with classmates, to enjoy the comfort of living at home, and to come to terms with the changes and challenges I will be presented with in a mere nine months when I head off to college.

Unfortunately, my senior year hasn’t been as smooth as I may have hoped, and when I learned on October eighth that my dad had suffered a traumatic brain injury, I realized that I wouldn’t have to wait until college for my life to change forever; it already had.

I could write thousands of words on what it feels like to have someone so consistent and so vital in my life to slip through my fingers, or about how amazing and supportive my friends and the Menlo Community have been during such a confusing and heart-wrenching time. I could go on and on about how inspirational and rare my dad’s recovery has been, or about how crazy big the number of people that have followed his story is. But instead, with the limits of a word count not necessarily on my side, I will share how much my priorities have changed.

I’m the type of person who cares a lot about small, stupid stuff. I get sad about little things, about B+s on tests I could’ve gotten As on or failing to score a goal in a lacrosse game, things that in my little bubble seem to be the end of the world, but in the scheme of my life are actually insignificant. Facing a challenge so large, so uncontrollable, and so different from anything I had ever experienced before forced me to prioritize: should I focus on silly mistakes or things that actually matter?

It’s hard for anyone, let alone a high school students, to look past self-criticism and into the bigger picture, to stop, step back, and think about how much the little things we get upset about really make a difference. As much as we may try to let go, our competitive nature and drive prevent the acceptance of anything less than perfection.

To me, learning how to continue on with my life despite my dad’s accident has been a challenge. I strive to balance my priorities and to continue to care about things a “normal senior” would care about, while also understanding how much more important my family or than a test, or my happiness is than perfection. Though I’m still in the process of understanding what this means and learning how to implement it, for now I know this: instead of letting the little things bring me down, I will let them life me up.