- NWN Editor-in-Chief, Colene Gibson, gives her final goodbye.
Today marks the last day that the class of 2012 will ever walk the halls of Niles West High School as students. As a part of the class of 2012, as I sit here writing this, it still hasn’t quite hit me yet. I’m not sure if it will hit me half way through the day or right as I’m walking out of my final class today. I’ve spent so much time, just like my peers, counting the days until graduation, and now it is just a few days away. I can’t seem to figure out where the time has gone.
It feels like just yesterday that I was walking through the doors of Niles West…I can still remember the exact outfit I was wearing, but, now, in exactly four and a half days, we will be walking across the stage at Northwestern, accepting our diplomas, and turning our tassel to the other cheek. We are about to graduate. (It still doesn’t even feel real yet!)
We’ve all had the days where we couldn’t seem to get the clock to move past our dreaded sixth period class…or seventh…or eighth…or ninth…but I have a feeling, today there won’t be enough seconds left in the day, so let’s make it count while we can. For the next few hours, this school is still ours, so let’s make the memories we’ve always dreamt about, say the words we never could get out before, and take just a few seconds to take it all in for one final time.
High school has been a time for us to grow up (well, for most of us) and start deciding what kind of person we want to become. And even though we still have a lot of growing up to do, a lot of learning, and a lot of hard times in front of us, this is the place where it all started, and I’m glad that Niles West is where it happened for me. We have had our moments with homework that seemed to be stacked taller than we were, backpacks that weighed more than we did, best friends that we’ve lost…and found, relationships that have broken our hearts…but also made us feel better than ever before, days we couldn’t wait to end…and ones that slipped through our fingers, but most importantly, we have made enough memories to last a lifetime, and this is just the beginning.
It’s a bittersweet farewell. Graduation means leaving behind the friends I’ve made, the teachers who changed my lives, and the place where I grew up, but it also means moving foreward to bigger (and hopefully better) things as well such as going to college, starting a career, getting married, and starting a family. It’s the beginning of the rest of our lives, and quite honestly, that’s pretty exciting. But first, we must walk across that stage, and since I’ve never been one for goodbyes, so I’m going to just going to leave it as see ya later, Niles West.
