Our Last Firsts
Senior year brings about a lot of “last firsts” in the lives of kids waiting to graduate.
No one really thinks about their last first. Things like your last first day and last last day are exciting, but it’s because you’re aware of them. So what about the others? Last first benchmark or last regular season home game? As a senior, I seem to find myself blowing over these accomplishments; do you?
10:31 and the time has come for me to start my last ever, first quarter American History benchmark. The anxiousness of not knowing what to expect that comes from taking a test from a teacher you’ve never had before is evident in my over eagerness to begin. It is only after I have finished, after I realize they are genuinely all the same, that it hits me. I’m done taking “the first big test” and I’m elated. No twinge or hint of sadness whatsoever.
I believe this to be why one glosses over our last first; we’re excited. We’re done. But done is a double-edged sword. Done with tests is an amazing feeling, but done with a grade you’ve worked so hard for? Brief history lessons in elementary school, geography and Mesopotamia, and naming states and capitals, turned into the Gilded Age of American 1800s and World History class with Attila the Hun. At the end of your secondary education, you have built so much knowledge off of the basics you thought you forgot, and it can be bitter sweet to see it go.
I don’t know if this feeling will end with my last year of high school. It’s hard to imagine anything taking up as much of my life as school has, not sports or friends, not even family. 16380 hours of my life have been strictly devoted to bettering myself in school. College is more extreme, but, on average, it is only four years. Out of primary and secondary school, college, and working, school is the second longest commitment of my life that I can foresee, and it’s nearly over. What does one do at the end of such a long relationship?
