A senior’s last impressions, my final year
Nostalgia is the most interesting feeling. I can still remember the day that, as a freshman, I pushed open the door leading to the belly of Edward Little High School for the first time, for it hit me right back on the nose. I was captivated by how different high school was. Being the stereotypical freshman that I was, it is no surprise that this mishap was meant both literally and metaphorically. Today, as I enter the now familiar halls of our high school, I found the door closing behind me without any mishaps. I suppose such a meaningless event should lack significance but it didn’t. It finally expressed my victory over the school; I had gone from clueless and immature to experienced and responsible. It also made clear, if only to myself, my “status” as a senior.
The pleasure of such realizations was short lived, however, as it dawned on me that my days at Edward Little High School are coming to an end. The first day of school would be my last first day. This might not seem like much but its implication is interestingly greater than you would expect. It is not so much that graduation is upon us, because it is not. In fact, to most of us, it is the farthest thing from our minds. Instead, there is the idea that there is no going back. As each minute passes, it quickly turns into an hour, then into a day, and finally, into months and quickly enough, it’s over. The idea that time we have not spent is time we have wasted and that our world’s will only remain as they are for a short while is suffocating.
As the sands of time pass through the hourglass, you cannot help but pounder the meaning of your high school life. There is no one amongst the generations of seniors who have walked the halls of Edward Little has nothing to regret. As we come to the realization that everything that we wish to do has to be done now or never, one cannot help but feel crushed under the weight of this burden. However, nothing has changed; we have simply run out of time.
It is interesting that, every year, seniors are asked to contemplate their high school careers at their end. Why not examine these careers while there is still time to correct what would otherwise become future disappointments? Amidst all the various subject, classes, and extracurricular found in high schools, it is hard to pinpoint what we have truly learned during these high school years. Truly enough, 20 years from now, most of us will not remember what a composite function is, or what letter Hester Prynne wore on her chest: so, what, if anything, do we learn in high school?
The idea that I submit to is one of an almost primitive simplicity. The point of high school is to learn who you are and who you want to be. Through our high school experiences, we develop a sense of ourselves stronger than any other time in our life. During senior year, it is critical for us to explore the idea of our existence in the world itself, outside of Edward Little High School. As such, seniors should contemplate their high school years and decide if they really know who they are. If not, they should find out. Life experience is the only way to do that. In fact, that is the only difference between freshman and seniors, not age, size or driver’s license’ those are immaterial. The true difference is that a freshman comes in a blank slate and, as a senior, must leave this school knowing who he or she is.
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