Congratulations Senior Class of 2016!

It's crazy how one moment you feel like you run the school to being back at the bottom of the chain. We are getting praised for finishing high school, and were lauded copious number of times for thinking about dropping out of high school. Now that we made it, what have we really learned?

In my perspective, I have learned that high school didn't burst into song and dance but more like bursting into all the stress and work teachers would give you for being a senior. The teachers can be the closest friends you could possibly have. That the guidance counselor will always support any decision you make, even if he or she thinks it's a bad decision. Friends will change more and more as the year goes by. The senior trip will the most talked about event, even if it wasn't as great as people anticipated it to be. Prom will be the night that you realize that it will be your last night together as a senior class until graduation. Senior Ditch Day is the day all seniors unite as one to coordinate a day to stay as far away from the school as possible, even for the good students that will only come for one teacher for the last moment before graduation. Graduation is the day that the students can finally call their teachers by their first names.

I've seen so many changes from my last four years in high school that I didn't think I was truly ready to leave all the amazing friends I have. Time went by in a blink of an eye, looking upon these years — we accomplished things that people around us wish they could accomplish with us. As my graduation rapidly approaches, I think of the sweet, heartwarming moments that I've had with my friends and teachers.

I know we all say the same thing: "I am happy to be leaving this school," or "I just want to leave." Usually, the people that say those lines are the ones that are eager to visit to see how the next senior class is growing up. Seniors that say those lines tend to stay in touch with the teachers for advice or questions about their college lives.

In my perspective, I still have lots to learn. I won't be the perfect 4.0 GPA student the first year, and I won't have a great sleeping schedule. I will make many, many, many mistakes but everyone does. That's what makes all of us humans because we can either learn from our mistakes or run away from them. So thank you everyone for just being yourselves. Being true to yourself makes it more worth getting to know you. This isn't really a good-bye, more like a see-you-later, because our journeys will continue in different directions but we will intertwine again at a later time when we have accomplished more of our goals. For now, we will always have the pictures to show how much we truly cared for one another.