Julius

So...here it is!

The time is fast approaching when I will leave this place and move on, perhaps to better (and certainly to bigger!) things. As much as I look forward to starting my college career at Appalachian State University, I’m going to dearly miss some of the things about high school that made it more of a positive experience and less of a daycare for teenagers; I’m going to miss the immediate company of my friends old and new, I’m going to miss the teachers who've put up with me more than I deserve and taught me more than I could ever repay, and I’m going to miss the familiarity of the building itself. There’s something comforting about routine and predictability...but it's this predictability throughout my high school career that damned me for the better part of the first two years. I feel that I’ve too often fallen into the trap of routine. Many of you may remember freshman year as a time of change, and of opportunity. It was a time to expand your horizons, make new friends and touch base with the old. That is, if you weren’t me. I entered freshman year with a feeling of dread, primarily. Sure, I had friends, many of whom were upperclassmen who assured me that this would be the easiest of all of my high-school years. For those of you who didn't know, I was a pessimistic freshman--I took it to mean that it only got harder from here on out. I felt disconnected, and generally discouraged by the crowds, too much so to really get involved in anything. So while other freshmen were busy making connections and branching out, I was busy balling up and reading my books in the library, at lunch, in class...and so on. Over the year I slowly got better at talking with strangers and adapting to the general weirdness of high school (thank you upperclassmen!), but still felt remarkably out of place. This set me up wonderfully for Sophomore year, where nothing of importance happened. At all. I'm willing to swear under oath that nothing changed but the weather. Junior year, though, something achieved critical mass. This is, without a doubt, the year I changed. For the better or for worse, I don’t know yet, but the process begun that year is far from over. My life continued for the first part of that year much the same as the first two; dull, bland, boring, unimaginative, and static. I was the same person who’d walked in the doors freshmen year, only instead of dread and trepidation, I only had a sort of cultivated boredom and general anxiety about failure. It DOES get better, promise. Around winter, I had a sort of revelation. Everything came together. I resolved to make change a conscious decision; I'd been still too long. I deliberately cut out unhealthy friendships from my social life, began to take a more careful approach to my schoolwork, and quit obsessing about other people’s opinions. That summer really helped me develop this new approach, as well as develop my personality; throughout the previous two years, personal growth had been put on hold. Those few months somehow made up for that, and I started Senior year reborn, at least on the inside. It was incredible. Senior year, with its myriad of challenges and new experiences with old friends only reinforced what I'd found: Change is GOOD. Change is necessary. Plus, change can be fun, too. I’ve come out of my shell more than ever and made friends with people I never would’ve considered talking to before. I’ve challenged myself by taking the AP exams, and I got accepted into my first choice college. I believe that most, if not all of these good changes are a result of my new perspective, and so I look forward to what lies just in front of me. For the past four years, people have been telling me I would do well to use my voice, but I know that I've never been good with the words to back it up. So, I'll settle for this: I will always remember high school for my friends, teachers, and the classmates I never got to know well enough with the greatest fondness. And that, thankfully, will never change.