Halfway there

Student Blogger
The first semester is over, done, laid to rest in its grave of grades, final as death. It’s relieving actually – we’re halfway there in this marathon called school. 2009. The beginning of a new year. The freshmen are wiping their brows, glad to have survived their first semester of high school. High school: a jungle to some, a beach to others. The sophomores are inwardly groaning. They’re thoroughly stuck in the middle of the tunnel. Were we really that young? They ask each other, glancing at the tiny freshmen, practically falling over from the weight of stuffed backpacks. Will we ever be that old? They wonder, staring in awe at a senior – tall, lanky, bearer of freshly sculpted sideburns. That same senior is antsy; six months more till I’m out, he thinks, six more months till life. And yet still, he’s tied down with the ropes of senior project, the anticipation of acceptance letters, the worry of leaving behind childhood, of leaving everything he knows. And then there are the juniors, class of 2010. Perhaps lost in the shuffle? We’re the ones who have to get it all figured out. You should start thinking about college, our mothers and teachers and sisters and brothers and fathers tell us. You should start thinking about what you want to study, where you want to study, how you’re going to get the money to study there – at that junior college, at that university, at that vocational school. You should really start to think about what you want to be. Be? What, exactly, do I want to be?
Juniors – we’re the ones with the perpetual shadows under our eyes, the somewhat disheveled hair and clothes, the long list of things to do, of things not to do. We’re the ones who are hammered with the pressure to think about who we are going to become, of what we are going to become, of how we’re going to become whatever it is we’re going to become. We’re the ones who are ensnared by our schoolwork. So much to do, so little time to do it. And yet, somehow, amidst all this thinking, all this anguish of printing up lists of colleges and lists of careers and lists of requirements, I’m happy. I look around and I see smiles. I hear laughter. I see people walking with a spring in their step. I don’t know exactly why I’m happy, but I am and so are they, and really, I know it sounds cliché, but in the long run, that’s all that really matters.