Whether you are a current student or have already graduated from Padua Franciscan High School, there are certain things you will never forget. I still know every word to our alma mater and still say "go bruins" when I meet up with my old high school friends. You might not have realized it in high school, but Padua was truly a family.

1. Driving and seeing this sticker everywhere.

Even if you are 100 miles from Padua, if you pass a car with this sticker on its back window, you instantly wonder who it is. You may even frantically speed up to see who is in the driver's or passenger's seat. You never really realize how many people are connected to Padua until you see this sticker a thousand times a day.

2. Uniforms on 90-degree days

Uniforms are both a blessing and a curse. Yes, you can wake up at 7:15 a.m. and make it to school by 7:30 a.m. because you don't have to go through the stress of picking out a cute outfit, but when you check the weather and see it is going to be sunny and 75, you soon start to resent your shirt, tie and infamous Padua pants and polo. Sweating in a uniform is particularly worse than sweating in normal clothes. You may have heard people complaining about "swamp ass." What is this term you may ask? Let me just tell you, you do not want to know.

3. Padua cookies

The best 50 cents you ever spent at school, these cookies were eaten for breakfast, lunch or simply a snack and usually had to be eaten with a spoon because they were so warm and gooey. There is really no way to accurately explain why these cookies were so good, you'll just have to taste them for yourselves.

4. The line waiting for the Buffalo chicken wrap

As soon as the period before lunch ended, you sprinted downstairs. Every Thursday was buffalo chicken wrap day, and the line was always ridiculously long. This was the day you always cut in line if you saw your friends, and then Mr. Gullivo would yell at you to go to the end. However, nothing was worse than getting to the front, and the lunch lady telling you they were out. This normally only happened to those who had ninth period lunch.

5. Clean-up crew

Speaking of lunch, the best way to make your Monday worse than it probably already was, was hearing your name being called for clean up crew. Whether you were on trash cans or washing tables, clean up crew sucked; however, washing tables was significantly less sucky. Being on clean up crew meant you probably were going to get some sort of food thrown at you and ketchup on your hands for the entire week. Just another reason to envy the seniors as they are exempt from clean up crew.

6. Liturgy schedule

Liturgy schedule meant all your classes were 25 minutes, and seriously, what could be better than that? Because of short classes, teachers usually used this time for a movie or a study hall, except that one teacher who tried to fit an entire lesson in 25 minutes. As if gathering as a community to celebrate the liturgy wasn't great enough, having an easy schedule throughout the day was a nice bonus.

7. Thanksgiving lunch

No one can deny this was the best lunch at Padua. People talked about it weeks in advance, and you even had to buy a special lunch ticket for it (unless you made your own fake lunch tickets and tried to sell them to underclassman). You always begged your teacher to let you leave class a little early, so you were one of the first ones in line. This lunch consisted of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, a roll and pumpkin pie. It was also nice getting an extended lunch period while you tried to finish every bite of this meal. Pro tip: uUnbutton your Padua pants – it helps.

Everyone was so excited when we got the Chromebook. You were able to surf the web in study hall and message your friends on Facebook. It was the best thing that happened to Padua until everything got blocked. Administration even blocked websites that were actually needed for school sometimes, but thank god for Pinterest.

9. Hating Holy Name

The rivalry between Padua and Holy Name has been in existent since the beginning of time. Holy "Shame" would always hunt the Bruins, and Padua would always surf the wave. Every single football, volleyball and basketball game was a battle between the better private school of the area, and of course, the better student section. We always won volleyball, and they always won basketball, so the rivalry was for absolutely no reason. But still, go Bruins!

10. "One team, one dream, one family." "Are you in? All in!" "Bruins united!"

Mr. Stec would begin each school year with a motivational story and slogan, cheer or motto for the upcoming school year. Every assembly, athletic event and announcement began or ended with this saying. And if we were really lucky that year, we got T-shirts or bracelets to constantly remind us of these words to live by throughout the year.

Every school has unique qualities and things their students will remember it by. These are only 10 of the things I remember about my years at Padua, but I could go on and on. I truly think anyone who attended Padua Franciscan High School will remember it fondly and will hold the memories and friends they made there close to their heart. You may not have realized it at the time, but we really were a family, and you will never experience that same closeness in a community again. There is a sense of pride when I tell people I went to Padua. Mr. Stec said it best, " Once a Bruin, always a Bruin."