2021, the year that everyone was wishing to be better than the horrid 2020, just so happened to turn out to be much better than the year before. It took a while for us to get to this point, but graduation is just around the corner as we approach our final days of our high school careers here at Northland.

As Graduation Day continues to inch itself closer and closer, students are continuing to study and prepare for their final exams that will take place this week, with the realization setting in for many that this is the last exam they’ll ever have to take in high school, but not even remotely close to the last one they’ll take in their lifetime (college says hello). Studying for finals for the past few years is anything but out of the ordinary. However, something about this year feels more, no pun intended, final. The dream that all of us at one point in our lives had that we would one day graduate from high school and move on into the real world as adults with our whole futures ahead of us is now about to be a reality. While this may be shocking for some students, for others, including me, it helps me reflect back on the memories that I made in high school over the years.

Freshman year was definitely the best year of high school. Everything felt new in a sense; new teachers, new classes and electives, new privileges and opportunities in academics and in sports were all there for us to indulge in. We got to attend our first school dance for the 2017 Homecoming, and it was probably the most hype best the school ever held until Senior prom this year. Almost everyone was able to excel during freshman year throughout 2017-2018 and make the Honor Roll, and the optimism for our high school careers had never been higher. Then out of nowhere, BAM! Sophomore year comes along and knocks us all down a peg. Without a doubt the hardest year we faced in high school, classes such as Chemistry with Mrs. Clapper (whom I still have nightmares about to this day) and AP World History together were enough to make you want to pull every hair off your head from the amount of stress the classes induced upon us. After such an easy-breezy freshman year, getting a reality checked from 10th grade was something that me and many other people in our grade didn’t know how to prepare for. Fortunately, after a miserable first semester, things slowly started to improve in the first half of 2019.

In 2019, classes became more manageable as we started to figure out the swing of things, and we had plenty of success when it came to sports, as I got to be apart of a Division Championship in soccer and a State Championship in baseball. Then, Junior year comes along. More new classes and a whole new renovation to the campus injects energy into the junior student body, and everyone gets off to a great start to the oddly normal, un-eventful year.

Once 2020 rolled around, even the thought of the idea of “normalcy” is completely spit on. The COVID-19 outbreak came around and completely messes with our routine lives, and we were forced to adapt to our new situation or fail trying. Amazingly, we were able to get through the rest of the year online with no mishaps or bumps in the road whatsoever. Finally, senior year comes around, and as COVID starts to become more controlled and more restrictions are lifted, we were finally able to resume a somewhat normal learning experience. Take for example, we get to have Senior prom at the aquarium for the first time since 2019, which was one of the most fun nights of my high school career. As we start to wind down, that brings us back to the end of this semester, where we await the upcoming Disney Trip and our senior Graduation.

With my seniority in high school approaching its expiration date soon, I can’t help but feel a bit bittersweet about it all. All the memories, all the friends I made, and all the things I learned in high school shaped me to how I am today, but I’m still not sure if I’m 100% ready to move on to the next step of life at college. However, one thing I can be certain of is that I’ve got a whole another 4 years to make new friends, have new life-changing experiences, and learn new things at The University of Oklahoma, and I’ll never forget about the people here in Texas that guided me through my journey at Northland Christian.