“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”A famous line from John Lennon’s infamous song ‘Beautiful Boy’. While metaphors like this may sound corny to some, this is a quote that has always stuck with me.
I have lived through what a stereotypical high school experience looks like. I went to all the football games, was at the parties in the sweaty basements Saturday night and I even failed some classes. But in doing so, I gained much more than just new experiences to look back on. It’s easy to get caught up in the things that seemed so bothersome at the time, but now as a senior I can hardly remember what I was so torn about in October of my junior year. And looking back, it all passed because of the people I was with.
I really was one of those people that felt that high school was a place I was excited to come to every weekday. While I mourned Sunday nights knowing I would have to wake up at 7 a.m. the next morning, I knew I got to come to school and see everyone. I would share a smile with that one person I sat next to in freshman year biology. I would get to have small talk with that one class friend I would probably not see outside of school. But there is something so special about that. You can share a connection with someone at school and not have to think twice about it.
That is what made Walter Johnson so special to me. I would have conversations with kids from other schools who would complain that their school felt so separated and lacked connection. But I could never agree, I truly felt that there was something special about our school, that there was an underlying sense of something deeper. People that all knew each other from elementary school or middle school or even just a second-period assigned seating arrangement got to know each other and spend four years seeing each other everyday.
But what mattered most to me was my friends. I cannot write a reflection on high school without mentioning the people I have had with me since the beginning. The people I have known since our first 7th grade hangout at Holy Cross. Thank you to bad boys in the bathroom for all our memories. And thank you to the people who I’ve had the pleasure of growing up with. The “Jews” have meant more to me than any other group of people ever could. Thank you for our late nights and sleepovers that will stay with me forever. Words cannot go far enough to describe what friends can be for you as you grow up. You truly will never be a teenager again, and we have seen each other grow in every phase of our lives and have stayed by each other’s sides.
And the most thanks goes to my best friends – MCG. There is no greater blessing than having met these six other girls freshman year. We have truly LIVED life together and I am grateful to be able to say that. No matter where we go in college, no great separation can impact that. To know there is a group of people out there that can just put in the code to my door and walk in, people I get to call my family, is the greatest gift WJ could have given me. Thank you Nat, Shosh, Macie, Evie, Eloise, and Eliana for becoming the family I never got to have. You are what has kept me steady for the past four years and made me feel fulfilled everyday.
You will never get to see the people from elementary school everyday. Never get to stress about a retake in math class or get to jump the fence by the baseball field to skip your last period. And you will really never get to be a senior watching as the last month with the people you’ve known since you were little fades away. But I am grateful that I get to reminisce on heart-aching memories with so many people in my high school journey. As John Lennon said in ‘Beautiful boy’, “Every day in every way it’s getting better and better” and I truly believe that it will. From the bottom of my heart I see every single person at WJ moving on and doing better and better. Thank you Walter Johnson for the most memorable years of my life and I can’t wait to see you all at BOW.
