A weird, adventurous, hard, and rewarding 4 years

So… this is it. All four years of high school are done and over with. It’s definitely been quite the ride. I can say with certainty that from day one freshman year to day one thousand and whatever it may be today, all of us have changed. I think we all came into our freshman year with different expectations of how high school was going to be and what we wanted these four years to be like. I know it definitely wasn’t what I expected. As most every one of you knows, I didn’t grow up around here, I spent the first 12 years of my life in Germany and then moved to the US near the end of my sixth grade year. The only thing I knew for sure about Maine was that my dad grew up here and that there are lots of trees. My ideas about what an American high school is like came only from movies like High School Musical. So you can imagine my surprise when we turned up for our first day of school and there was no group of athletes that broke out into song and dance while playing basketball. 

Freshman year was… weird. We were feeling out what it was like to be a high schooler, we were the smallest kids in the school, we started to get to know our teachers for the next four years, and we started to slowly venture into groups of friends we maybe hadn’t had before. For the most part we were still all pretty much the same as we had been at the beginning of the year. 

Sophomore year was… adventurous. We were now on our second go around at Oak Hill High School, we knew a lot of the school and teachers, we started having a lot of choice on what classes to take, we started thinking about what we might want to do after high school but it felt forever away so we weren’t super stressed about it, and we continued to grow both physically and as individuals. This year a lot of us started to take some harder classes and again make new friends including some from the class of 2021 which were now the little freshman we were happy to no longer be. 

Junior year was… hard. We took the SAT, we started really thinking about what to do after high school, a lot of us were taking some sort of dual enrollment or AP class, some of us got jobs for the first time, we had to put in a lot of hard work both in and out of school. Even though it was hard, junior year was an amazing year, all sorts of cool things happened. From the girls soccer team winning a championship against Monmouth of all schools, to a member of the drama production writing and producing their one act performance, which did really well, to the French club going to Canada, to Aca Deca going to Minnesota, and much more. As students we became more inclusive, we stopped worrying so much about fitting in in high school and just really became ourselves. We were finally upperclassmen and started becoming even closer with our friends and teachers. 

Senior year was… rewarding. I originally wanted to say that senior year was stressful, because it was. Moving on from high school is not easy, whether it is going into the workforce or going off to college, it is one of the most stressful things we’ve ever had to do. We had to do all sorts of testing, paper work, and we had to make a choice on what we are doing. A lot of us have become really close with our friends, our teachers, our coaches, or whoever, and now we are leaving them. I know how difficult it has been for me personally to write appreciation letters for some of the teachers I am closest with, not because of a lack of what to write, but rather that as I am writing them I am remembering all the good times and those four years that felt forever away are now over. But I didn’t choose the word stressful, because I think that senior year has been rewarding. Now that it is over, I won’t remember it for being stressful. I remember it as the year I really got to connect with my classmates for the last time, the year I made a very big decision about my life for the first time, the year I really got to show my appreciation for my teachers that have been helping me since day one, and the year that really allowed me to look back on all the great moments we’ve all had. 

I’m sure every one of you has at least one good memory from each year that you will never forget. And even though this chapter of our life is over now, it has shaped us, helped us grow, and shown us that even when things get tough and it seems like there’s no way to do something, at the end of the day we persevere, we go through it and we get it done, I mean here we are. So, Oak Hill Class of 2020, thank you all for making a difference in my life whether we were best friends or barely knew each other, you have helped make me the person I am today and helped me learn things not only about math or English but about life and how to live it. Thank you.

Photo on oakhillnet.org