Catholic schools start out when you are young. For me, I was in the same school from kindergarten until I graduated from high school.
This made it easier for me to transition into new life eras because I knew everyone around me was going through the same thing. The best part of it is that more than school pride, we had a class pride which made us all think of each other sort of as a whole. My senior year of high school, some of us faced many obstacles, but somehow everyone felt as if everyone was all in it together. We took pride in being Class of 2014 and it made us stronger. Today I can remember this, seeing as my brother is now a senior in high school saying goodbye to his second home and his second family.
We all loved getting in trouble together, especially during school mass. Whenever the public had to respond during song or whenever the priest said something, it was typical for the class to come up with something clever (or really stupid) to laugh about later when we were punished for it. Also, I remember that as one of my class’ typical junior/senior pranks, one girl, from my class, stole one of the numbers of the last senior days (Too long to explain, but just know, IT’S A BIG DEAL). When we were all summoned to receive our punishment for this, no one ratted her out and everyone wanted to take the punishment as a group…Even though she wanted to step up and take the blame for herself.
Two years later, my brother is graduating from the same Catholic school I went to. On the last day of class, they all joined, arm-in-arm in a circle around the school recess area, in one of the traditional last-day-of-class ceremonies. There was sad music on and a timer that marked the last thirty minutes of high school. I remember when it was my time to hold my friends and cry, thinking this was the saddest thing that had ever happened to me.
When I got to college, I realized I was one of the few lucky ones to have enjoyed high school so much and who had found a home in school. I knew every single student’s first and last name, every teacher’s administrative and maintenance name as well. We were all one family. I saw that again with my brother’s class.
One of the most beautiful things that my school tends to do that I don’t think other schools agree with is that during this arm-in-arm ceremony in the recess area. Kids that went to our school and for some reason had to leave, can join arm in arm with their brothers and sisters and say goodbye to high school together. My brother’s class was no exception from this.
As they all cried and hugged each other, I laughed because I remembered having the same feeling. I remember thinking that change was about to come and that I didn’t know what life would be like without my high school. I had a huge mix of emotions, but I was mostly scared that nothing would live up to what high school had been like. Today I look back and now I see that it’s so not a big deal to graduate from high school and that so many other beautiful and wonderful things are to come! However, I was lucky to be able to feel such love from/to my school; something that not many other kids can say because they were never in a place long enough to know how deep of a connection you have with a place you go to every single day for 13 years.
