Photo courtesy of Lifetouch

I don’t know how to start my reflection. It’s an impossible task, how can I sum up four years of my life with a couple of paragraphs? I would be lying to you if I claimed that I would be able to summarize my four years at WJ.

Like everyone else, I’ve had my highs and lows in high school. Some days I spent all of my energy getting out of bed. Then other days, I felt that if I got past the morning hours, I would have enough energy to complete that 50-point assignment, that 15-point quiz in period four, that ridiculously long homework that was assigned for a million practice points and that assignment I forgot to do the previous day.

But, what will I remember from high school, what will be the one thing I carry with me going forward in my life? Maybe it’s staying up way too late for my own good routinely to watch Warriors games when I should be sleeping? Sorry, mom. I definitely will remember that. But, on a more serious note, high school is like a metro station. Everyone comes to stay for a little while, just to leave for another place. Leaving, arguably, for a better place. But, what I will remember, vividly, the good and the bad, is my time in room 193.

I don’t know how much of an impact The Pitch has had on my life, I know it’s a really big one, but to its extent, I don’t yet know. I have spent four years in room 193 (one year virtually) and it has become the single constant in my time here at WJ. I have spent three years on the staff, starting as a staff writer and eventually working my way up to online editor-in-chief. I have learned many lessons in the four years, but one that will forever be important is my responsibility to myself and other people.

On my good and bad days, I still have to be responsible for others and the newspaper. That challenge is why I look up to Mrs. Borrelli. She has to deal with me, eating all the granola bar snacks in the cabinet and 70 other high school students across multiple periods on the same staff. I don’t know how you do it, Mrs. Borrelli, but you have a special superpower, because I don’t know many other people who can do what you do.

I will remember rushing to write a story on something that happened in the community, seeing my story on the paper and website and knowing that my work and my actions do have an impact. I will remember arguing about anything sports related on a podcast, or with my friends in room 193. I will remember publishing the stories to the point the keys fell off of my computer.

I will forever cherish my time on The Pitch, as it has developed the person I am today. As I look forward to my next step, it has still not hit me that my time here is ending. I know that I will be graduating and moving on to college, but that still feels like a fever dream. There has always been next year, but now there isn’t. The finality is not something that I will fully realize even when wearing a cap and gown at graduation. Sometime this upcoming summer it will hit, I am done with high school. I am done with K-12, what I’ve known my entire life. I am boarding the red line; off to college.