We all entered high school much different people than we are now.
Regardless of how we’ve changed, we should just be glad we did.
As freshmen, we sucked.
We were obnoxious, egotistical, self-absorbed and not as bright as we thought we were. We thought we were on top of the world — as lowly freshmen.
And we are soon to become freshmen once again.
Bottom of the totem pole, food chain, what have you.
But, on the bright side, I’m actually confident this go-around as a freshman will work out much better for me.
I’m leaving this school a much more confident, poised person than I was four years ago.
Thankfully, I got pulled into the journalism program during my sophomore year.
Every interview I ever did taught me to present myself with confidence even when I wasn’t feeling it.
Every deadline the staff completed was a victory against my procrastination.
And I learned.
I learned about people.
And people are the most important thing to learn about in life.
It isn’t math or science or geography or gym that will get you through life, though they help, it is people.
It is friends you learn to keep close because they’ll be there no matter what — at your worst, at your best, to tell you you’re worth more than what you put up with, to tell you to step it up because you’re capable of more — those are the people to keep around.
You just learn, and there’s no better time to do it than in high school.
The friends I’m leaving from here turned out to be the most fantastic people I’ve been lucky enough to surround myself with.
I’m not the type of person to believe the notion that I’ll stay in touch with a ton of people from BV. I won’t, and I don’t want to.
But there are a select few friends who I hope to never fall out of touch with.
Whether it be just greeting cards or coffee a few times a year, I hope to stay in contact with the people who have been there through everything.
Those are the people I’ll miss.
Those are the people who have helped shape me into who I am and who’ve created memories that’ll last a lifetime.
The memories I’ve had here, between being the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, listening to principal Scott Bacon cheer on every student group because he genuinely cares and just sitting in comfortable silence with the people that mean the most to me are what I’ll miss.
When I go to college, the students I meet and befriend won’t know me the way my high school friends have — they’ll be wonderful I’m sure, but just different.
The friends I’ve been closest to here are irreplaceable. No one else has sat through countless late nights in the newspaper room with me, no one else meets me at midnight to get a Sonic Reese’s Blast and tots and once we all go to college I won’t be spending more time at my best friend’s home than my own.
Those memories can’t be recreated after we leave high school, they happened and are soon to be over.
It’s up to us to cherish everything that’s made us who we are, because soon everything we once knew will be over and everything new and unexpected is about to begin.