An 18 Year Old Child

So, during my extensive Veronica Mars viewing last night, I got to the part of the series where they are nearing the end of their high school career, and anytime they talked about something about leaving high school I was on the verge of tears. I got to thinking, when it's my last day of school, and I'm taking my last final, will I be able to answer that last question? Put that last period on the end of my last high school essay question? Write my name on my last Naperville Central assignment ever? In my mind time will stop. Everyone talks about wanting to leave high school, get out, explore the world. Seldom do they take the time to look at all the adventuring they've done over these past four years. These last 4 years, for me, have been full of tears, heartbreak, love, new friends, fear, anxiety, relief, joy, happiness, disgust, enlightenment, and whatever other words one can think of. Sure, there has been a lot of pain, but there has been so much joy. I've walked the halls of Central countless times, heard enough swears to make a nun cry, seen enough fights to make a TV special, listened to enough gossip to fill an Us Magazine, and yet I'm not ready to leave it. Part of me has manifested itself in the halls that I've thought of as prison-like for the past few years.

If you really think of it, High School is like our parents, we resent it so much at times, but it keeps us safe, and teaches us what we need to know before sending us into the outside world. Sure, it may hand us things that we won't want to do, but isn't that what our parents do? Another thing that is really going to bum me out is leaving a good amount of my teachers. One of my favorite things in the world is having a teacher who loves teaching (and I've found surprisingly few, when it comes to my high school experience) I've been fortunate enough to have some of the best teachers ever over the course of high school. I'm not sure what it is, but when I am fortunate to get a teacher that possess such qualities, I often want to befriend them. Maybe it's because I tend to associate more with adults than with people my own age, maybe it's because I see qualities in them that I see in my own friends. If a teacher can actually make me excited for a class, then why wouldn't I want to be friends with them? They're making something I would normally dread, a treat, and that is no small feat, considering the fact that I'm the kid who used to shut down and cry when he realized he had to go to school the next day. To some of these teachers, I owe a portion of my life, for reasons I don't want to get into because then this post would take up a good part of my afternoon.

My bond that I feel with these teachers (I will post a list later) will make my leaving high school so much harder, that the more I actually think about it, the more I don't want to go. They say that before you die, your life passes before your eyes. Well, I am certain that before my high school career dies, with that last bubble being filled in, that last period being placed, that last time I'll ever write my name in a desk in Naperville Central, my High School life will pass before my eyes. All the tests I've ever taken, homework I have (or haven't) turned in, times I've been yelled at, times I've felt an instant connection with a teacher, times I've made my classmates laugh, all those times will flash, giving me my one last fresh breath of High School world before I'm nudged out into the real world.