For many of you, this month starts the beginning of your very last semester of high school. You've probably already noticed by now that senior year is a year unlike any other. You've already experienced a lot of things for the last time. Your last first day of school. Your last high school football game. Maybe even your last school performance.
You've probably already chosen a college or career path. All of these things are typical to your senior year. You hear older siblings or friends talk about them. You know they're coming. They're expected.
What no one ever really talks about is that ever-present feeling as the number of days you have left as a high school student become less and less. No one tells you that, as the year comes to a close, your favorite teachers start to feel less like teachers and more like friends that you have to leave behind.
People don't mention how bittersweet it feels to clean out your locker and walk down the same hallway that you've walked down for years for the last time, past the same classrooms with the same walls that have seen you at your best, and at your worst.
It's almost amusing if you think about it. When you first start high school, four years seems like such a long time. It feels like you'll never graduate. And then when the second semester of senior year rolls around, you realize that those four years passed you by without you really even noticing.
You go to high school sports games, plays, dances, bonfires, and it feels like you'll keep doing these things, with these people, in these places, for the rest of your life. It's a little sad, and a lot scary, when you walk across that stage or field at graduation and all of a sudden, those things are over.
These people around you, your fellow students, will likely never all be in the same place at the same time ever again. Some of you will stay at home and go to school close by, or start working. Some of you will join the military. Some of you will move away and start a brand new journey. In all reality, you will never speak to some of these people, maybe even people that you considered friends throughout high school, ever again.
So take it in. Appreciate where you are, and the people you're there with. Spend time with your friends. Spend time with your family. Let the people that are important to you right now know that they are important to you. Be kind. Take lots of pictures. Write things down. Remember these last few months. People say that the years you're in high school are the best years of your life. I don't know if that's true, but I do know that they're pretty dang special, and if I could go back and do it all again, I wouldn't change a single thing.
