Senior year is about to start, and it’s strange, but yet timely, how it’s taken me until now to reminisce at the last four years of my life. I’ve been with the same 500 kids for six years, and even for twelve if you count elementary school. I’ve met friends through school, my neighborhood, Church, camps, teams. At the same time, I’ve had to let many go as we get older and our interests differ. But no matter the situation, we still share a commonality and all take on the major event that 17-year-olds must undergo. We’re all entering senior year together. We’ve been the freshman, faced the condescending seniors and gained a little back muscle from carrying those clunky backpacks. Sophomore year, we were the grade stuck in the high-school limbo, not yet upperclassmen, but not the scum-of-the-earth 9th graders. Junior year we finally got privileges, had a little more freedom with class choices and persevered through the standardized testing craze. And now we’re going to be experiencing the most important emotional transition periods of our lives so far. We’re trading our teenage immaturity for adulthood. And with the infamous college admissions process, we’ll be finalizing our future and where we choose to spend the next few years of our lives away from the home we’ve always known.
I’m looking forward to the best year of high-school, or at least, that’s how the senior hype goes. The seniors are in charge of some of the best school events, like dress up day. It’s an all-school assembly, but its real purpose is so that seniors can officially establish their authority over the school. Even the freshman get tossed into the auditorium as a consolation prize for, well, being freshman, and they have to watch from a life camera feed in the gym. As an underclassman, I revered the seniors. The ones I knew were great role models and people I really looked up to. They were the captains of the teams and the clubs, and they had great responsibility in their positions and handled them maturely. They were welcoming and inclusive, when you got to know them. It’s going to be weird, this year, when the underclassmen are looking up to me instead. I already promised myself to work hard this year to handle the responsibility as well as the seniors I know have. I hope I can be the leader that underclassmen, and even peers will be able to turn to when they need help. I’ll be Vice President of the Student Council this year, and I know that having that position gives me the opportunities to communicate with both students and faculty. I’m looking forward to meeting more people and fostering more relationships.
There are a lot of changes to AB, especially with an interim principal, and other new staff members. I’m hoping for a smooth transition, and it certainly will be interesting to experience these major changes in my last year. The one thing that I wish the most for senior year is to be happy with the decisions I’ve made and the people I’ve met through this community that I’ve lived in for most of my life. And with only one year to go here, I hope I make the best of my last year at AB.
