For the past several weeks, visitors to the Powhatan Today website have had the rare opportunity to take a peek into the life of one of our local high school students.

Hillary Travis, a senior at Powhatan High School, has been brave enough to take on a weekly web column detailing the trials and tribulations of her daily life. Her column, entitled Hillary’s High School Highlights, has received an incredible amount of interest from our readers and often receives more comments than any other article.

As is typical of teenagers, I am never quite sure which Hillary I am going to meet each week when I receive her column (always before deadline, by the way, which should immediately endear her to every editor who reads this).

Will it be the it-could-only-happen-to-her Hillary who passes out while giving blood in the PHS gym? Will it be the voice-of-reason Hillary, pushing for fewer restrictions on the school’s computers? Or will it be the pop-culture philosopher Hillary, as it is this week, thoughtfully dissecting some layer of the high school student identity such as music or fashion choice?

Whatever I get, I can assure you that it is always thought provoking, and it never fails to pull me back, even if just for a moment, to my own high school days.

I won’t admit where I went to high school or how long ago that was, but suffice it to say that I definitely notice a change in the pressures and demands placed on today’s students.

Students today seem extraordinarily busy, with schedules that I can’t recall ever having to handle until college. When I was in high school, you may have played three sports, but at least you didn’t play them all at the same time. Now there are students who not only play a sport each season, but also play on an elite travel time at the same time.

The off hours have changed as well. When I was in school there was a sort of de facto downtime at the end of the day, simply because we didn’t have cell phones or instant messengers keeping us socially connected 24-7. Now kids never seem to have a moment just to think, or even pause, before it’s on to the next thing.

Even fitting in seemed easier then. Sure it might have taken a little extra effort to dress like the “in” crowd, but it didn’t, as Hillary points out in this week’s column, take a $400 purse.

Every time I’ve been cut off by a young driver on the highway, every time I hear about a teenager getting booted out of school for something I can’t imagine one of my former classmates doing, I have to fight the urge to sigh and ask “what is the world coming to?”

But I can tell you just from covering sports in the County, and just from the relatively small number of students I have met, we may not be giving them enough credit.

Hillary, to look at her, looks like a typical teenager. She’s quiet around people she doesn’t know and she’s always hiding behind her hair. Read her writing though, and you are suddenly introduced to a sensitive, intelligent, side-splittingly funny young woman. And through that writing you see a side of high school life that just doesn’t ever seem to make it into the newspaper.

I’d like to thank Hillary personally, for allowing us a glimpse both of herself and of the world she inhabits every day.

It’s a strange new world for many of us, but one that we could all do well to understand a little better.