Since I was in elementary school, I’ve constantly been told by my friends and family that high school would be over before I knew it. I always thought people were just saying that, and it wouldn’t really go by that fast. Even at the beginning of this final semester, I never really came to terms with what was to come. Now that I am getting ready to graduate in less than a week, it still hasn’t sunk in yet.
Freshman year felt like it took ages, and the classes seemed foreign to me because I had never learned another language or had classes with people so much older than me. The school day took forever, and finding people that I knew in the classes was a rare event. I spent most of my freshman second semester in online school, which was difficult and boring.
My sophomore year felt faster. I was more acclimatized to the high school and the environment of the building. I started running track, swimming for the school team and playing baseball outside of school. The year felt like it went by like a breeze, because of how busy I was and the amount of fun I was having with my friends at school.
On top of the sports that I started in my sophomore year, I started writing for the school newspaper, “The Lion’s Roar.” Mrs. Curran, my freshman English teacher and the newspaper adviser, came to me and asked me to join the newspaper. I enjoyed writing, and figured “why not?” I went to my counselor to get my classes changed, but I didn’t realize at the time how big of an impact that choice would have on me. This class has had its ups and downs, but I have met many new friends, many of whom I still hang out with often. Apart from the social and academic support this class gave me, it has helped me internally through the consistency of going to the newspaper and working on articles and other projects for the class.
Continuing to my junior year, I continued swimming through the winter and started fall ball for the first time, unfortunately, during a fall baseball practice, I threw from right field to second base and immediately my arm started hurting, I knew something was wrong, but figured it was sore or aggravated, and assumed it was nothing. A month later, at the first practice of the winter swim season, my shoulder hurt too badly to swim, and that’s when I knew something was seriously wrong. I tore my labrum. This made time fly even faster, because my sports were so important to me that the only days that mattered were when I would get more news about the injury.
It feels like my senior year only started a few weeks ago, but somehow it’s over in less than a week. I feel like it was over as soon as it started. The end of high school is bittersweet. For three years, I’ve only been able to say, “I can’t wait for high school to be over, I can’t wait to graduate, and high school couldn’t have gone by slower.” Now, looking back, I wish I had looked at the good parts too, had more fun in high school while I had the chance, and lived a little more in the moment, rather than just waiting to be done.
There is a quote that I feel is fitting to end my high school career, because of how true it is, and because of how many days I skipped my senior year. In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, at the end of the movie, he finishes with his famous quote: ¨Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
