Taking an abbreviated schedule my sophomore year so that I could leave early to go to my tennis training had its positives and negatives. On one hand, I knew this was the right decision for me personally since I had my mind set on playing college tennis. However, only taking four classes meant I left school before lunch every day, which was definitely a big adjustment to my daily schedule.

Although I loved getting to leave and train, as someone who used to have terrible FOMO, this new schedule was not great for me at first. I began to feel as though I didn’t even really go to WJ. At the start of junior year, I rarely saw my friends at school because I didn’t have any classes with them due to how few in-person classes I took. I felt like I wasn’t a part of anything surrounding Walter Johnson, and I thought I was missing out on something when my friends spent their whole day at school and even spent time after school in club meetings or sports practice.

The only school activity that has been a constant through my last few years of high school is The Pitch. Joining The Pitch allowed me to feel like I was truly a part of something at WJ, and that I was leaving some sort of footprint behind. The Pitch staff and Mrs. Borrelli have taught me so many important things and have helped me not only develop my writing skills but also in discovering my passion for illustrating, which is something my freshman year self would have never thought I would have liked in a million years. I guess what I am mostly trying to say in this article is thank you. Thank you to the great Pitch staff, Mrs. Borrelli, all the readers of the Pitch and to the countless people I have bothered by constantly pulling them out of class or DMing them on Instagram trying to gather quotes (I’m sorry). Although my Pitch staff member career is ending, I take my love for writing and teamwork with me to college as I will be majoring in Journalism starting in the fall.

It is definitely going to be a summer and fall of big change not just for me but all my classmates, but I’m so excited to see what the class of 2021 is going to accomplish.