Having an older brother has always given me the opportunity to have an interesting perspective on age and the different ages of the people that surround you. While I dealt with my melodramatic troubles in middle school, like most seventh-grade girls my age, I remember hearing my brother talk about all the great people, mostly his peers, in the school who had really made an impact on his time there. I remember envying him for his experiences and wishing that I were in high school too.

When I finally became a freshman, I tried to make friends with as many different people as I could. I found myself talking to new freshmen, sophomores I had known from middle school and even my brother’s friends who had not graduated yet. While I realized that I was at the bottom of the food chain and had little to no meaning in the upperclassmen’s lives, I was still very aware of the seniors who presided over me in the different clubs I had joined. I saw them as leaders, role models and generally people whom I would look up to in the future.

Those seniors would become my mentors, my peers and would play a role in some of my favorite memories from high school. Being very active in both theater and the literary magazine, these students became the ideal that I would strive for as I grew older. I remember thinking to myself, Wow, I can’t wait to be just like them. As cheesy as it sounds, I wanted to make a difference in other students’ lives as they had in mine. They inspired me to take that extra step and become a member of something that transcended the idea of leadership.

My senior year of high school, I was able to stand in the shoes of those leaders and hope that I had influenced underclassmen as the seniors had once influenced me. Becoming a leader and mentor was never about leaving behind a title, name or legacy, but instead a family. As my freshman year of college comes to an end, I find myself recognizing the amazing upperclassmen I have been granted the opportunity to work with this year alone. In what seems like a few short months, I have learned so many new things and have gained so many amazing friends just from the events that I have participated in with these students. Between a literary magazine and theater, once again, I have had the pleasure to meet some influential people. I can only hope to be as accomplished and significant as the seniors I have met this year. I cannot wait to see each and every one of you change the world.

To all the seniors, past and present, that have inspired me: Thank you.