Do you know where you are going to college next year? 

The standard, typical greeting that every adult has taken on for the past nine months. While it obviously comes from a good place, as it was repeated and repeated and repeated, the question made me anxious as it framed the entirety of the last four years exclusively on the outcome. The part-time jobs, the summer internships, the volunteering, the extracurriculars, and the AP classes we juggle concurrently. The question suggests that all of this effort is only as good as the place it gets you next, an idea that is familiar at LM where a competitive culture runs rampant, where the baseline classes are called “College Prep,” and where you cannot walk through its locker-lined hallways without passing student after student dressed in college swag. 

But last week, my aunt asked me something different:

Are you satisfied with what you’ve done in high school?

I was taken aback. For the first time, I was forced to reflect and I realized how quickly high school has gone by. Ninth grade. Mr. Moeller’s EdPuzzles, Romeo and Juliet, the post-Keystone bird unit. All of it seems like it was yesterday. Could it really have been four years ago? Could all that worrying about the future have detracted from my enjoyment of the present?

As paramount and life-altering it may have seemed in the moment, most of us won’t remember our final grades, or the effort we exerted on grueling projects, or the hours we spent to meet NHS quotas. 

We will remember the Maroon Madnesses, and the Radnor Weeks, and the Lip Dubs, and the basketball games. We will remember the mornings with LMTV and afternoon send-offs from Dr. Johnson. We will remember the people – the teachers, the students, the staff—who, for this small but formative period of our lives, had an incredible influence on all of us. 

These people, these experiences are what truly matters. My biggest regret is not understanding this earlier. 

Whatever is next for you, make sure to take time to appreciate it. Smell the roses. Think about tomorrow but not enough to dissociate from today. Because ten, fifteen, twenty years down the line, when you realize that all the little things are actually the big things, you want to be able to hold your head high knowing that you have enjoyed them.