The Final Stretch

After a long week (that for some reason included homework,) yesterday seemed to be the beginning of the end as far as my high school career is concerned. The day began with graduation practice which, in spite of its excessive length, reminded me that I will be graduating from high school next Wednesday.

As silly as it may sound, I know that I'll be graduated by this time next week, but I don't feel as though I'll be graduated. It hasn't hit me. There has been no paradigm shift in which I realize that my life will soon move beyond high school. Still, this reality is quickly becoming more and more apparent as high school comes to a close.

Tonight is Senior Dinner Dance, the last dance I'll have with the Hillcrest Class of 2010, an amazing group of people. It's going to be the first of many "last _____ I'll have with the Hillcrest Class of 2010." That is such a bizarre thought.

I've spent so much time with my classmates over the years, some since preschool or elementary school. Soon and literally for the first time in my life, I won't be surrounded by these people at all. I'll be 2,000 miles away at college, reminiscing about the last eighteen years of my life and the strong friendships I've formed in that time. My life as I have known it will soon be over. I won't live at home, not even in my hometown, and will be thrust into a life which I'm sure will be very different than the one I'm living now.

This may come across negatively, and I don't mean it to. Yes, my life will be different, that much is sure, but it won't be bad. In many ways, I look forward to this chapter of my life. I know that I will make new friendships, learn a variety of lessons, and take this opportunity to reinvent myself to a degree, all good things, but I will certainly miss the people and the life that I leave behind.

I think all of the graduating seniors have similar emotions. Emotions that border on excitement and trepidation with a sense of surrealism attached. None of us can fully comprehend what being graduated will be like or feel like or what lies in store for us in our future life path.

Luckily, neither I, nor any of my classmates, have to worry about coping with such emotions directly until this Wednesday evening. Until then, I'm going to fully enjoy every end-of-high school activity on this final stretch, beginning with Senior Dinner Dance tonight.