It’s been a long ride. Four years of the morning announcements, of Lunch and Learns, of walking maroon-and-white hallways. It’s weird to think that there are people who I’ve been going to school with since kindergarten that I may never see again after graduation. We get so used to our own worlds, our own routines, that we tend to forget just how quickly things can change.

There are definitely things I won’t miss about high school: having to catch the 6:40 a.m. bus for three years, coming home on the late bus only to be met with hours of AP Language and composition annotations, or double chemistry sets, just to name a few. But as much as four years at LM has had its annoyances and frustrations, I can look back at my time in high school as a success, and I think that most of us can too. No matter how easy or difficult your classes were, what extracurriculars you were a part of, or what you plan to do next year, you made it to graduation, and that’s nothing to take lightly. That process was no cakewalk for anyone, and even with all of the sadness that comes with leaving high school behind, I think that looking back on what brought us here is a valuable and important part of moving forward.

Whether it’s from friends or other peers, I’ve heard the question, “Do you have any regrets from high school?” a lot lately. That’s a loaded one, but I think that my answer, and a lot of our answers, would be some form of not taking advantage of all that LM has to offer. Getting so caught up in the stresses of academic performance and college admissions that you miss out on the everyday joys that do, in fact, exist from 8:30 to 3:15 is something that I think we can all relate to. This goes for graduating seniors, but everyone else, too; no matter how boring or pointless high school can seem at times, there are people in that building and in that community who care, who are passionate about what they teach, and who want to help you understand your world and yourself. If we all can take anything away from high school, it’s that there are hidden joys happening everywhere, you just have to work to find them.