Spring is the season of new beginnings, but as summer approaches many of us find ourselves faced with the end of things we have gotten used to. For senior students, it is the end of their public school experience and saying goodbye to friends and peers that have kept them company since elementary school. For those still in high school, it is saying goodbye to senior friends, and attempting to gather the strength to finish the last weeks of the school year with some aspect of dignity. Even the eighth grade students, soon to be first-time high schoolers, face leaving schools they have known for years.
With the end of things, still comes the good. Still comes the new. Approaching my last year of high school, I have the chance to reflect on everything learned and unlearned throughout the same grey and red hallways that have graced my eyes for almost three years now. Through these doors I have had the chance to lose the meaning of self, and to find it again.
It is surprisingly easy to lose yourself in the murmur of your peers. In grades, friends, work, etcetera. Easy to lose yourself and easy to fall apart. But, from the ashes rises the phoenix and every single student has the capability and opportunity to become something. Every single person has the chance to learn something.
Mentors have come to me in forms so incredibly unexpected that at times I have to search to find their lessons. Maybe a teacher doing their part to enhance my critical thinking and challenge my knowledge of academics. An administrator teaching me patience – even unintentionally. Maybe even a close friend to an acquaintance, reminding me how to be myself in a world of others.
Of course there truly is sadness and sentimentality at the end of the year. When the seniors walk out of these doors for their final time and when they walk at graduation on June 7, tears will come streaming down my face. Some of my closest friends will be entering a new chapter in their lives, and go on to new adventures beyond.
As J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” But for those of us who stay behind, who stay to keep the town intact, we will still be here, waiting, ready for a new day, and a new year ahead. See you next year my friends, I hope to see every reader back again, for another nine months spreading truth to Truckee.
