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High School is the time where curiosity takes over the mind of the once innocent child, causing them to become impulsive and sometimes a little crazy. As a kid I was warned to stay away from certain situations and to always make good choices. This seemed pretty easy to me. That was before I knew that to a 16 year old, the bad situations tend to mask themselves in a manner that makes them look harmless and pretty appealing. Making bad choices wasn’t given a bad rap, in fact, the kids who made bad choices seemed to be the happiest, the most fun, and even the coolest. Kids completely disregarded all that their parents taught them and instead followed the new shiny object that everyone seemed to like. For more simpler terms, this “shiny new object” at my school was most commonly known as partying. People I had been friends with in middle school began to take part in it, the grades above me took part in it, so it must not be that bad, right? Wrong. This is a crippling mindset that causes people to suddenly become okay with making poor decisions. However it’s so difficult to see that when everyone else around you is making the choice too. It’s easy for kids who were once strong in their faith to become wooed away by the shiny new object. People are told lies that It’s okay to go a little crazy in high school because they can “be Christians later in life”. Someone said those exact words to me at a party, which is what made me realize the continuous cycle I had now become a part of. People easily believe the lies that making poor decisions is okay because the majority of people make the same decisions as well. They expect that as a high schooler, all people will make the same choices. It's important to break this standard. God says, “don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity” 1 Timothy 4:12. As believers we have the ability to set an example for others and essentially break the status quo. We can’t allow people to look down on us or have low expectations for us because of our surroundings. Ask God to help you break the standard of typical high school kids and instead set an example for others in a way that encourages them to break the status quo along with you.