*sits down* oh no i got some stuff in my eye
*strange noises* HellO
Hey guys, it's Conan and today. I am going to help you survive high school
I get a lot of questions about high school
Since we're all kind of like the same age and you guys thought that I was a good high schooler
I get a lot of questions about it
Everyone's kind of asking the same questions, and I guess people aren't really answering them for them
So I thought I would try my best to answer them since I have officially survived high school myself
Now I'm going to college
What?
How did that happen and since I was such a good high schooler and I totally didn't get my health class 27 times...
I thought I'll give you some tips on how to survive high school non sarcastically
I actually had a really fantastic high school experience and since I'm an incoming freshman at UCLA and a lot of you guys
Really want to go to a school like UCLA like a big state school
or a private school or just a school that's hard to get into I thought I would share my high school experience and
hopefully answer some questions for you guys that are kind of nervous about the future of high school and
Kind of nervous about the future of getting into college
I thought I would just get the questions that I see most commonly and
Try to use my experience to hopefully make your experience better. Let's do this.One of the questions
I get asked the most about is making friends and the process of making friends and what can hopefully help you make some friends
Making friends is totally not as hard as you think it is for most of Middle school and even some of high school
I was very very very very shy, but I still ended up making so many amazing
supportive outgoing beautiful friends and don't think that just because you're shy you won't be able to make any friends because I
still made friends
But if you are shy like me it is a tiny bit harder to make friends because it's really hard for you to like go
Out of your way to talk to someone when trying to make friends. I say don't really bother
aiming for a certain friend group or a certain
Person because that's really hard to do and it's a bit unnatural like it's hard to know that you want to become friends with someone
Just because you see them walking around in the hallways or something like that if you're thinking about becoming friends
Someone just because of their social status or something like that totally not worth it when I was in high school
The group of popular kids really wanted to bring me into their group right when they found out that I was famous
There was the most boring people. I think I've ever met in my entire life
I'm so sorry to the popular kids who might be watching this but y'all are super boring all they ever wanted to do was party
And drink and it just wasn't my saying it was super boring. Don't pay any mind to social status
I made all of my friends through the classes that I had with friends and good news for shy kids
You really only need to make one friend in order to make a friend group
That is the beauty of friendship is you really only need one friend
So you only need to be uncomfortable one time and then after that?
You don't have to worry about it that much you can trust me when I say that you only need one friend
I have moved 14 times in my life. I am always the new kid
I made a lot of friends
And it was always just because all you ever have to do is make one
Friend because the thing is you make one friend and then that friend brings you to all of their friends?
And then you have a friend group, and it's so much fun
And you have supported people in your life now to make that one friend
I would suggest just making little
Interactions it never happens like it does in the movies where the kids like seeing someone is like
I want to be their friend, and then all then they walk over there like can I be your friend?
I think if someone did that to me I feel very uncomfortable
Because I don't know that it might work, but it's kind of weird all of my friends one of the main reasons
why I started talking to them was just because I had class with them, and I started asking them questions about the homework and
sort of talking to them about the teacher their friends and about their family and about what they liked to do and it just
Naturally flows like that like it's not this big. Oh, I want to be your friend
I'm going to go up to you and attack you with my friendship it just doesn't really happen like that also
You don't want to be friends with someone who you don't know anything about so even for you
You know it's better to have this slow process of getting to know someone to know if you really even want to be their friend
Because if you all have different interests and are completely different people
Then you probably don't want to be their friend say hi to that person every day
compliment them on whatever
They're wearing try to do all your group projects with them and then over time you just randomly realize oh
This person is my friend, and I really love them
And they're super amazing and I'm going to spend as much time with them as I possibly can wham-bam
A friend now if you're a naturally outgoing person, please go out of your way to become friends with the shy kids
They will really appreciate it. I definitely appreciated it next is how to balance school and having fun. I just like during high school
I had a very healthy amount of fun and school and only reason why I had such a healthy mix of that was because I
did not
Procrastinate I was not a procrastinator the absolute hardest time of my high school experience was around my sophomore year of high school
I hadn't learned how to not procrastinate yet
And I was getting swamped with so much homework that it just kind of made me feel so exhausted
All the time and mental health was at an all-time low
I just couldn't do anything
It was a really hard time in my high school experience
And it was because I was making mistakes and my efficiency
I would do homework at night when I was already tired when I already had a full day of things and I really just wanted
To go to bed. I started homework then, of course you're not going to be able to be doing homework
That's when your brain is like
Dying do your homework with a friend?
right after school that was when high school was the easiest for me when I one had a friend who a super super supportive and
Helped me
Do my homework and when I did it right after school when it was still day time when I still had energy?
And my brain was still alert and fresh with the new information that I'd learned during the day then I'd knock out the homework with
one of my friends
It'd be super fun because I was doing it with a friend and then afterwards
I'm hanging out with my friend and we'd have lots of fun and knowing that after you finished the homework with your friend
You're going to be able to run around in a park and be stupid and be teenager is
So much nicer than having a bunch of fun, but the whole time you're having fun
There's this like giant cloud of stuff that you have to do just looming over your head
I can't stand that and there is a lot of fun involved in doing homework one of your friends me
And my friend Ashley have literally a book, a small book that we've written
With all of our inside jokes in it because we have so many inside jokes. They're so stupid
They don't make any sense
But they were all created while I was doing homework with her so try to find a friend is going to support you is going
to push you to work hard and really have what's best for you, and that friend in mind while you guys are doing homework and
Knock it out don't procrastinate
so that you can actually
Have fun while you're in high school if you find that you're doing seven to eight hours of homework every single day
There's definitely something that you're doing wrong you either
Have way too much of a workload and you definitely need to like not have as much or you're just being very
inefficient which leads into
How it's a handle stress best tip I could ever give to any high school student or any college student or anyone?
Who's busy ever is to get a planner? I know it's a cliche, but this thing really
Freaking saved my life there were so many times when I had so much to do and I
Really just wanted to die in a hole, but I just wrote everything down
organized what I needed to stress about and it just
Makes everything a lot easier to swallow I use the heck out of this planner
There's something really cathartic about the process of writing everything you need to do down
So just get a planner if you ever feel any stress about school ever get a planner
Just do it. Stop being stupid just do it the sad fact about school and being in high school is it's stressful
It just is it's a stressful time of our lives
It's very confusing you're trying to figure out what your identity is what your future is. You're trying to figure out college
And you're trying to figure out the people around you and you're falling in love and you're falling out of love
There's so many crazy first things happening while you're in high school
It's bound to be stressful in times when I was very very stressed during high school
It was always amazing to just
Talk out my stress to a friend to a parent to a teacher to anyone who listened I?
Cried to my art teacher more times than I think I've ever cried to anyone else
I have cried with my best friend. I have an amazing support group
Who is there to listen to you, and everyone should have that because when you're stressed out? It makes it so much harder
It's all on you when there's someone out there
Who's listening and who has the same problems and who will be there to kind of go through?
What you're stressing about with you. It makes it so much easier
there is no shame in talking about being stressed out to someone that you're close with writing music and making art was also a
Really good way of me speaking out the things that were on my mind so also consider having something that
Kind of helps you process your thoughts it can be art it can be music
It can be a sport it can be really anything that you enjoy next is a big one
which is how to
Deal with the bullying here is some fantastic news for kids who are in Middle school that are going into high school
Bullying is not
Near as much of a problem as it is in middle school as it is in high school every single one of my friends
Agreed with me on this. It's not just amazing in high school kids
Don't care about other kids kids are already swamped with enough things
They don't really bother making fun of other kids
Especially as you get further and further into the year when you're having more classes and more things to worry about the kids don't really care
About each other they're not trying to you know
Despite other kids just to get off on it's like not a thing that happens in High school
I went to a public high school in the middle of conservative, Texas, and you think that the kids were really mean
But you'd be very surprised kids these days
Thanks to the internet are a million times more tolerant of other kids than they were let's say
Maybe 30 40 years ago with that being said there are mean people
They just always exist no matter what they exist in the workplace when you are an adult
There's always mean people that just like to be mean because they are insecure and they have to deal with their own problems
People who are mean to other people they need to work that anger out within themselves?
That's not something you have to fix. I promise you that there's nothing that you are doing wrong
Don't make it your responsibility to fix these kids tell a teacher tell it all if someone's mean to you you
Don't need to feel with bullying teachers need to deal with bullying
Administrators need to deal with the bullying you don't the few times that I was harassed or heckled in the school hallways or in
I told a teacher I got so many kids under detention so many times in my school
I was a bit of a target because I'd rested. I mean I talked differently did different things in them
You know I was making videos and writing music while they were all in football. So any times anything never happened
I just told a teacher. There's no shame in telling a teacher at a kid is
Following you around or something also if you have friends. They will always stick up for you my friends were extremely protective of me
They knew that I was a bit of a target because I live in a small town, and I was semi
Famous I hate using the word famous, but I had a bit of attention while I was in high school
They were very protective of me
They were always like don't dare say anything about Conan
So having a friend group is very very good next up is college planning and what you should be doing
When water break came?
freshman and sophomore year of high school don't even bother about
Planning what college you're going to and what major you're going to go to?
Because you don't really need to know at that time and most kids don't know just work really hard in school
Simple as that do not slack on your classes, especially
Freshman year underclassmen years are really important because although you think that they don't matter
they're going to really mess up your gPA if you don't work really hard and
Freshmen and sophomore year are the easiest years of high school
So why not get a head start while is still easy?
Something that you should be focusing on in freshman and sophomore year of High school
though is definitely discovering what you're passionate about what parents these days don't really understand about college as
College isn't what it used to be ecologists. Don't want kids who have
perfect grades of perfect sat scores and perfect sat scores and
Perfect scores on the Ap test sure they like that
But that's not what they really really want especially the big schools and big
Colleges that you know have the names to them that parents all
whenever you tell them that you're going to what colleges want to see these days are kids who are extremely passionate about one thing and
Stuck to that the whole entire time I did not get into ucLa because of my grade. I got in because of my
I had good grades. I had a very high gPA I got
decent sat sat scores
but they weren't hot I got a
1290 on the sat that's not high what?
Ucla likes so much about me was the fact that I had passion was the fact that I've been making Youtube videos
for nine Years
They want to see that kids have a certain things they really love and they're really working towards you can write in your essay
Oh, I really like engineering
But they don't care if you like engineering they want proof that you like engineering and that you've been working towards
Engineering they want to see that you've been in engineering classes for four years
They want to see that you're working on things outside of school that are engineering related
They don't want an assay that says oh
I love art it speaks to me art speaks to a lot of people
They want to know that you were born with a paintbrush in your hand and that you have so much passion for this one thing
That you want to do it for the rest of your lives obviously a lot of kids don't have that one thing
That's like. This is my thing that's okay. That's totally okay for kids
You don't have something that they really are super passionate about
Work really hard because it is harder to get into the school seeming like someone who's a master of none which sounds offensive
But it's not it's super normal. It's not offensive at all work
really hard in your classes to make sure that you get into a very big school that has a lot of
Opportunities and a lot of pathways that you can go down junior year is kind of when it actually starts to matter
What classes you're taking you don't have to know what you want to do with the rest of your life by Junior year?
You can absolutely change the route of your entire life while you're in college, but if you don't know what you want to do
That's perfectly okay
Just work really hard on all of your core classes that way you have more
Opportunities when you start applying schools take the sat take the ap key take Ap classes colleges still like to see good scores on that
Having good grades is never going to hurt your chances of getting into a school and then when senior year comes around
You apply do not apply to 20 schools so many of my friends were very smart
We're like the top ten people in their class
you know grade wise but they applied like twenty schools while they were in their senior year of high school and every single one of
Them regretted it. Nobody was like wow I'm so glad I applied to 25 schools
Nobody said that apply to a few that you actually
Think you're going to go to if you don't want to go to a certain school. Don't apply to it
Don't apply because of parents like oh, you should apply to 30 schools. That's stupid. Don't listen to that parent
I applied to four schools one school was a Fallback school
That was a school that I knew I was going to get into that sounds really arrogant
but it just according to my grades and according to my
Extracurriculars I kind of was able to predict that I'd get in I I kind of knew that I'd get in the second school that
I applied to was a
Maybe it was I could get in I could also not get in it was kind of a little bit more Iffy
But there still was a chance that I'd get in and then the last two schools
I applied to were far shots crazy schools that I totally did not think I would get into I ended up getting into
Three out of the four schools that I applied to which means that one of the crazy shot
No idea that I get into really thought I didn't get into schools. I got into which is ucLa
Which is a school that I actually am going to when choosing those four schools to apply to you
Have to keep different factors in mind like money and location
but truly if you have this massive
Passion for one thing and there's a certain school that you really want to go to and you've wanted to go to your whole life
You can find a way to make it work
I truly believe that the too far shot schools that I didn't think I would get into or ucLa and Berkeley
I got wait-listed by both UcLa and Berkeley
But the second that I found out that I actually got into ucLa
I rejected my berkeley application because I always knew that I wanted to go to ucLa that was my dream school
Which is proof there is no harm in applying to a school that you don't think you're going to get into I'm not
Being a humble when I say that I didn't think that I'd get into ucLa
I really didn't think I'd get it my grades
Just weren't close to good enough, and I felt stupid because I've been making Youtube videos for nine Years
But that was one of the main reasons
Why I got in because I had this clear passion for one thing and I've been working for nine years of my life to reach
The goal of actually working in the music industry apply to your dream schools. Just do it. There's no harm. You'll maybe lose 70 bucks
Seventy bucks for a chance to go to the school that you've always wanted to go to if nothing goes to plan can always go
To community college. I hate that there is stigma with going to community colleges. They are affordable
They make sense and you can transfer into an amazing school afterwards
I don't understand why people don't like community colleges if you don't get into the school of your dreams
Do not worry go to community college work really hard and reapply
And I believe in you and everyone believes in you you can do this those are all of my high school tips
I really hope they help and
Help you survive high school like I did I survive high school, and it was a lot of fun actually college advice
I cannot give you because I am going to college now, and I have no idea
What I'm doing
so if you are a college student or if you are a college student at UcLa the school that I'm going to
Please please help me. Please, please give me your most valuable tips in the comment
I would really appreciate that that would help me a lot for everyone who was in high school
Or is about to go to high school. Please don't worry
It's not at all like
people
Say it is high School
Is what you make it go to your pep Rallies go to your football game go to your basketball games hang out with your friends
Do the stupid high school cliches you won't regret any of it with that
I'm going to go I have been sitting on this chair for 40 minutes
And my knee pits are slight if you know anymore very valuable high school lessons
Please feel free to put them in the comments below
I'm sure that other people scrolling through the comments would really appreciate those obviously
I'm not an all-knowing being so um if I'm wrong about anything or if you have anything to add
We help me be a better influence to the world let's all get through high school and college together
I'll see you guys in a few days of the brand new video. God bless and goodbye
(Outro song by Conan Gray- Other Side)
(This is on Spotify)