The Sun invited Sonoma Valley High School senior Kate McFarland to share her personal impressions of the graduation experience.
On Friday, June 6, a part of my life that once felt infinite came to a close. As I sat in the middle of Arnold Field, in the seventeenth row of capped, gowned and restless graduating seniors, I tried to grasp at the moment for what it really was. I tipped back in my chair, diligently concentrating on absorbing every second, on drinking in the importance of my high school graduation. I noted the perfect blue sky, the glowing hills, the football field lights flickering on as the ceremony tumbled into night. I looked at the people I’ve known since kindergarten and the people who I never got around to befriending. And, alas, what did I feel?
I felt my stilettos sinking into the damp grass, I felt my mortarboard battling with the wind, and I felt the growing anxiety and inattention that comes with sitting and listening to drawn-out speeches.
This is not to say that my high school graduation was of no sentimentality to me, that I accepted my diploma with a shrug, or that I was “too cool” to get goose bumps as I moved my tassel from left to right. But rather, that this life-changing event was so huge that the reality has still yet to hit me. In twenty years I may look back wistfully, wishing I had held that panoramic view in my mind’s eye just a bit tighter, but at the moment, I can only be proud and a little be surprised. My time at Sonoma Valley High was nothing short of amazing. We sank and swam, won and lost, and we grew up. My celebration of the last four years was not on Arnold Field. It was in those moments that we pushed on and became the people so strikingly different from the ones that entered high school four years ago. So while the details of June 6 are only faintly etched into my mind, while I may not remember every speaker’s words of wisdom, I will always remember my years at SVHS; and I could not be more proud.
