Oh boy, where to start…

I feel like it was just yesterday that I was stressing out about my first day of high school, and now here I am writing my last piece for DHS Press (which, coincidentally, is the last high school assignment I’ll ever do). These last four years have been the longest years of my life, yet it feels like they’ve passed by in an instant. 

Honestly I’m not fully sure what I should write. I’ve experienced so much over the past four years, and it’s hard to decide what’s meaningful enough to mention and what isn’t. I should probably talk about the year and a half that we lost to COVID, and how that year almost single handedly made me drop out of high school, and how my mental state has been forever tarnished because of it, but that’s no fun. The whole point of your childhood is to have fun, right?

Quite frankly, I don’t think high school has been everything that I thought it would be. I never had the “high school experience” that I was promised as a rising freshman. As much as I’d like to blame it on the pandemic, it was mostly my fault. I didn’t go outside of my comfort zone, I rarely took risks, and I’ve paid the price for that.

If I had one piece of advice to give to anyone reading this, it’s to go do stuff. It doesn’t matter what it is, but you should do it. Go enjoy yourself while you have the chance, because it’ll slip through your fingers much quicker than you could ever possibly imagine. Unfortunately, I missed my chances, and because of that, part of me will always wonder what could have been.

Nevertheless, I’m excited for the future. I’m lucky enough to say that I will be furthering my education at Old Dominion University, and hopefully getting a chance to make up for all of the experiences that I’ve missed out on over the last few years. Thank you to all of the teachers, counselors, and friends that have helped me get to this point in my life. I can genuinely say that I would not be here today without the support and encouragement that you provided to me in my darkest hours.

The journey is just beginning, and I can’t wait to take the next steps on mine!