As I enter my final Christmas season as a legal child, I’ve taken the time to reflect on the past seventeen years of my life, especially the four years in which I’ve spent in this high school. I entered freshman year in the midst of a pandemic, and each day I wonder how different high school would have been if the world was normal in 2020. Would I have made the same friends or participated in the same things if I had a typical experience?

“These next four years will fly quicker than you think.” This overused statement has been said to just about every person entering their freshman year. I rolled my eyes each time someone said this to me, knowing that these four years will drag just as much as middle school did. In my time as an underclassmen, I anticipated leaving the valley and going far away for college. I had a strict plan of where I was going to go and knew exactly what I was going to do. My entire life was set in stone. 

Unfortunately, freshman me wasn’t quite capable of planning out an entire future. Everything I’d planned out at fourteen is almost the opposite of what I’m planning to do at seventeen, and there’s a pretty large chance that my plans will change again. I don’t have much control over how my future will go. But, I have control over how I feel about things right now, and I can learn to understand what I do and don’t enjoy.

 I know how happy singing makes me and how much I look forward to the PMEA Choirs each year. I know how much I enjoy reading books that let me slip into a fantasy place away from the loud halls of this building. I know that I love my close friends and driving around rich neighborhoods with them during Christmas. 

As I walk through these halls and see the kids I’ve known for twelve years, I mentally prepare myself to be surrounded by my peers for one final time at graduation. I’ve grown with these people, and I’ve learned something from every single one of them. Though I won’t be surrounded by them every day anymore, I know each of my classmates will have successful futures in whatever they may do. 

Life is such a short experience, even in the moments where a day can seem years long. But it truly does slip away, and the experiences I have each day will soon become a foggy memory that I will look back on and laugh about. Each embarrassing moment that made me believe I’d be a laughing stock of the school was forgotten. Come June, I will just become another person to survive the Wyoming Valley West High School, but the memories I’ve made will stay with me forever.

If I could give my younger self advice, I’d tell her that stereotypical line that every single freshman heard entering high school. These past four years have flown by, and I have many regrets, but I wouldn’t change a single thing if I had the opportunity to do so.