Us seniors remember waking up on the first day of freshman year, feeling like we had plenty of time to discover who we were and where we wanted to go in life. “Four years is a pretty long time,” we thought to ourselves, yet here we are. Those years have gone by in what felt like four minutes. Notifications pop up on our phones, “three years ago today…” showing memories like the first football game, or old friend groups that had a falling out. That bittersweet feeling starts to flood in—excitement for what the future holds, but sadness in leaving behind the only thing that’s familiar to us. 

There are so many things we are going to miss, but there are also some things that we can’t wait to say goodbye to. “The thing that I’ll miss most about high school is just the environment that it puts you in to make friends. You get into your new classes and there’s just a bunch of new people that you could easily meet,” expresses Stafford High School senior Boom Wilson. He shares that he is happy with all of his experiences, and that there is nothing he is looking forward to leaving behind. Stafford High School senior Grant Myers on the other hand, states, “I’m happy to be leaving behind the atmosphere and unsaid tension between people who you don’t know but [they] know bad things about you.”

We experience an extreme amount of maturing during our teen years; seniors are often completely new versions of themselves compared to when they were freshmen. Wilson says, “I would tell my freshman self to just focus on school, don’t worry about nobody else but yourself, and with your main friendgroup, don’t think too hard about it; it will change multiple times. Just stick with the ones who you believe you can trust.” For a lot of us, the friend groups we started with when we were 14 have probably evolved or even been completely replaced. Figuring out types of people we should surround ourselves with is one of the biggest things we will take away from high school.

There is one thing that we can’t forget—the memories. They will be what we tell our kids about when they are about to start high school…just how our parents did for us. Some of them may sound simple, but in the moment, they meant everything. “The hour lunch of freshman year. I’ll never forget all of the stupid stuff me and my friends did within that hour and how crazy fight week was,” Myers reminisces, “It was a great time. [I] learned and grew.”

All of these memories and lessons that we’ve learned in high school are paving the way for who we are to become in the near future; even the bad ones. “After I leave high school, I definitely will be more independent, and I love that,” exclaims Eva Mason.