Let me tell you a little bit about the place I have experienced my high school years in and the place I can call home: Verona. This is a tribute, and thank you to everything Verona has offered me.

Verona is approximately a total of 2.776 square miles. You can get a sense that Verona is a very small town and that many people don’t know about us. Any Verona resident describing their location will mention their neighbor, Montclair, and immediately people will recognize where we are. Not only is Verona great for its proximity to New York, but once you stay in Verona, you never leave. Literally. This isn’t a bad thing, I promise. You have all you need here. Many students I have associated myself with simply just don’t leave the town of Verona. And by leave Verona I don’t only mean just leaving the town on a random day, but I mean you will rarely hear someone moving out of Verona. This is because of the fact that everyone and anything is in it. All of your friends reside here, you probably have your whole family here (or some), and you have all your food essentials. The best bagels at Bagelwich, the famous sandwiches at Frank Ants, coffee to go at Dunkin Donuts, and a quick snack at Krauzers.

Now let me talk about Verona High School, located on Fairview Avenue in Verona, New Jersey and consisting of about 600 students and 150 in the graduating class of 2016. Most graduating seniors spent eight years with their classmates, but for me, just four. I came in as a new student, but luckily I had my family in the school to help me with the transition. See, as I said before, you probably have your whole family here, and that’s me. Thankful for my cousins, I had a smooth transition not only as a new student but also as an incoming high school student. I made the most that I possibly could out of my four years in Verona. Time flew, of course, and the final day I had been counting down since my freshman year came before I knew it. It was the big day, June 17th-- graduation day. The day everyone had been waiting for was here.

This same day, you reflect back at your high school years. It gives you this bittersweet, indescribable feeling. You reminisce about the good times and the bad. All of those dreadful days spent in math class questioning your teacher why you are learning about the Pythagorean Theorem and how that will help you in life. You remember reading Hamlet and hating every minute of it, and writing an essay about the war of 1812. You don’t want to write about something that happened 204 years ago, you’re excited for the future, and that’s all you’re thinking about. You’re watching the clock until each class is over, and finally it is your last math class, English class and history class and then you smile. But you’re confused why you are smiling because all of those classes you dreaded make it so hard to leave.

We count down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until we are done and then we wish we could go back. Talk about self-contradiction. So why is it so hard to leave the place I dreaded waking up for? In case you are questioning the same thing yourself, I’ll tell you why. We grew up here. We laughed and cried, learned and struggled, succeeded and failed, and we sought and conquered together. We spent 720 plus days together. So of course it’s hard to say goodbye. We’re all headed down different paths. Yes, we’ll keep in touch with our close friends and maybe with distant friends, but everyone is starting a new chapter. We are afraid of the unknown. The foundation that Verona laid for us prepared us for the unknown that lies ahead. We are all so lucky to be apart of something that makes goodbyes so hard.

Now I want to thank the staff, students, and anyone that made my high school career one to remember. Thank you, Verona, for watching me grow up. Thank you for shaping me into the student and person I am today. Thank you for getting me through four years of science class. Thank you for creating memories that I will never forget. Thank you for teaching me right and wrong, through the good and the bad, the pretty and the ugly. Paraphrasing something Jim Halpert said in "The Office," “Even if I didn’t love every minute of it, everything I have, I owe to this school. This stupid, wonderful, boring, amazing, school.” Thank you, Verona.