Only when you're seventeen do you realize that, in the real world, your value as a human being is not as important as money is.
Only when you're seventeen do you feel that you're hanging off the edge of a cliff... and your parents are about to let go.
Only when you're seventeen does it all become so clear: the bugs that you ridicule for being mindless drones in crowded, duplicate, cloned colonies, have all along been laughing at you.
Only when you're seventeen do you realize that your nemesis in life has been, and will always be, yourself.
Only when you're seventeen does the horror strike you: you have been friends with your teachers for several years now.
Only when you're seventeen does it seem that, no matter how unique and exceptional you believe you are, there has been someone just like you each year since the dawn of time.
Only when you're seventeen do you mourn for the lost time spent being bored.
Only when you're seventeen do you realize that the computer that you so enjoy playing on is the very one that has taken your job.
Only when you're seventeen do you notice that the traits that you despise in your father have been magically appearing in you.
Only when you're seventeen do you wonder: If nobody conformed, what, then, would they be?
Only when you're seventeen do you feel disappointed: These are the best years of my life?
Only when you're seventeen do you suspect that for every open-minded person there is another closed-minded person that cancels the other out.
Only when you're seventeen do you notice that your best friends are now your worst rivals.
Only when you're seventeen does it dawn on you that if you were born two hundred years ago, you would've been considered middle-aged.
Only when you're seventeen do you fight your hardest to remain young, all the while criticizing today's youth on their immature behaviour.
Only when you're seventeen does it seem that society was at the best it would ever be thirty years ago, and that it's now all downhill from there.
Only when you're seventeen do you dream of conveyor belts at night, but only during the school months, for some reason.
Only when you're seventeen do you have long hair, wear baggy clothing, listen to rock music--My God! You are your parents!
Only when you're seventeen do you wonder that if religion never existed, would earth be like heaven?
--Grade 12