The Beginning Of the End

My graduating class, along with the three classes before us, all share a unique experience that changes how we see our senior year. We all attended Roosevelt through a computer screen.  When the pandemic hit, the class of 2024 was in eighth grade. Many of us didn’t re-enter a school building until the beginning of our sophomore year of high school and even then, we were still in masks and engaging very little with each other. With our junior year serving as our only “normal” year of high school to date, the fact that we’re seniors is truly surreal. We never got those high school “firsts” and now, it's all coming to an end in eight months and thirteen days. 

I feel like senior year has been this big, looming concept since I was in middle school. Oh, colleges look back at your grades, oh watch out for that senioritis, oh, this is going to be the best year ever!  Since I was young, there were expectations set in my mind for my “perfect” senior year. But here we are, the actual thing and to be honest, it’s just like any other year. Sure, we have a date for our graduation (June 2nd) and are all deciding what the next steps are after high school but we’re still just the same kids we’ve been for the past three years. We still show up to class everyday (or we don’t), we still do our favorite extracurriculars, and we still hangout with the same friends we’ve had for years.  there are just these little voices in the back of our heads, reminding us, “You’re a senior. This is the end of high school. You are about to be a grown up and be responsible for your own choices.”

This is truly my letter to the class of 2024. This is our moment to shine. Our moment to make our lives our own. We are the only people that get to decide who we are and what we are going to be. We have an opportunity to forge our own paths and shape our own lives. We don’t have to choose what we want to be tomorrow. We don’t even have to choose this year. But every single one of us must understand that in a little over eight months, all those choices will be ours for the rest of our lives. Let's enjoy the last few months of “childhood” and let’s choose to be the best version of ourselves, together.