Senior year. You rule the school while getting ready for college. Every big event is momentous as it is the last. No more first days of school, no more Homecoming dances or Proms; you have your Senior Night for the sport you’ve spent the last one to four years of your life playing and you end it all with your graduation night.
Graduating high school is always a controversial topic among the senior class. Some seniors can’t wait to get out, while others wish they could stay longer. While the graduating class does have a mixture of feelings towards getting out of high school, most can say that the closer graduation night gets, the more emotions, whether it be sadness, happiness, excitement, or “senioritis” are aroused.
The graduating class of 2023 has had a long and adventurous four years of high school. Freshman year was cut off early due to the Coronavirus pandemic. From March to the end of school, everything was shut down which turned to schools going on online. Sophomore year, students got to go back to in person classes, but a mask had to be worn. Finally with the passing of the pandemic, junior year was back to “normal,” only this time around the class of 2023 were suddenly upperclassmen. Like many adults say, “Senior year went by in a heartbeat,” and it sure enough did.
Looking back on my own high school career, the years flew by. After missing a third of my freshman year, I decided I wanted to make the best experience possible out of my three remaining years. With this decision, graduating will be a bittersweet end to high school for me.
As the year comes to close and the official graduation gets nearer, the stress starts to leave and the excitement of what is to come next fills the minds of restless seniors. While they enter the unknown of life outside of high school, the real world anxiously awaits to greet its newly grown charters to further add to the book of life.
The night of graduation will be filled with tears of happiness and sadness as the graduates, their loved ones and friends take a look into the past of the graduating class. Funny stories and memories are shared, reminiscing on the good times. Speeches from the wise as well as from the Valedictorian bring awareness and comfort to the room of crowded people. For the final time, the class of 2023 will leave their high school and go their separate ways, making their own paths in life. However, the graduates will never forget the school they came from and can now start every one of today’s stories with, “well when I was in high school …”
– by Ari Hurdsman (18) Junction
Feature image caption: A graduating class completes their aura by throwing their caps in the air after graduation. Ari and her class are looking forward to their graduation with fear and excitement. Courtesy Emily Ranquist.
Ari Hurdsman – Junction
Ari Hurdsman is a junior journalist at the Byway. She just recently moved to Ephraim, Utah, where she is a freshman at Snow College. She enjoys writing about Piute sports, and she’s really good at it! In her free time, she enjoys singing, dancing, reading and hanging out with friends and family.