Back to My Roots: A Letter to the Juniors

Anyone who knows me — from my friends to my family to my teachers — knows that recently, I’ve been delving back into my childhood favorites. I’ve been running Harry Potter marathons just about every night (I’m not kidding. It’s been a real embarrassing amount of Harry Potter. Plus the whole Fantastic Beasts trilogy.), hashing over The Land of Stories with my friends (for about an hour at a time), watching Hamilton in APUSH (ergo listening to it in the car on my way home from school), and taking on new arts and crafts projects (a favorite childhood pastime). With the JIRP/JRP turned in and AP tests done and over with, I’ve had a lot more contemplative and reminiscent time on my hands, and this is how I’ve been spending it.

As junior year comes to an end, I’m wondering if this newfound nostalgia is related to the closing of such a significant era in my life. Of course, us high school juniors still have long lives ahead of us, and in actuality, the times we’re reminiscing on didn’t happen all that long ago. But with our dear senior friends leaving for a new chapter of their lives, I think we’re all a little fearful of the intimidating future that lies ahead: college applications, and eventually, finishing high school. I think that it’s because of this that I’ve been leaning into past comforts, which I’ve actually found to be quite rewarding. I think I had good taste as a kid.

It’s sort of surreal to think that we’re so close to finishing with the notoriously challenging beast known as Junior Springtime. Junior year tested me in ways I didn’t know possible, and not just academically. For me, and I’m sure many of you, it was an extremely formative period of my life that I predict I’ll reminisce on much in the same way I’ve currently been reminiscing on fourth grade (a lot of Harry Potter reruns). 

My current phase of sentimentality may be born out of fear of the future, but it’s kept me grounded in allowing me to explore my childhood and the things that influenced how I grew up. As we enter the next phase of our lives, I encourage everyone to look back on their past in order to take pride in the present. We’ve changed so much, some for the better, and some for the worse, but we’re ready to take on what comes next.

I hope we can all use one of our last teenage summers to relive our childhood experiences, because we’re all still kids. To quote our elementary school yearbooks: HAGS!