In some ways, I still feel like the five-year-old who walked into kindergarten on the first day with no friends in her class but a lot of ideas and a little too much excitement over the concept of school. In other ways, I almost can’t believe how much I’ve changed—or grown, maybe developed, rather—but that seems too clinical an outlook on my life.

Recently, I’ve been reflecting a lot on my past. It’s sort of inevitable, considering the massive pivot point I find myself at that is the end of senior year. It’s fascinating to consider the seemingly mundane moments that have profoundly shaped the outcome of my life: the day my future best friend and I met while our parents were at a staff meeting, the afternoons in first grade when I discovered how much I love writing, the middle school music classes that have fueled years-worth of gossip. More overwhelming is the knowledge that the decisions I have made of late and the ones I will make in the coming months will have ripple effects across the entirety of my future.

Like most people, I started really discovering my sense of self in high school. Though middle school started out well, it eventually turned into my own personal dumpster fire. It wasn’t by the fault of anyone in particular; I was just an anxious 13-year-old. Consequently, despite the rather daunting hurdle of a global pandemic, I was determined to use high school as an opportunity to reinvent myself. 

Fortunately, this didn’t exactly go according to plan. It turns out that there are certain aspects of one’s personality that are extremely difficult to challenge, such as a tendency towards introversion and a general rational fear of meeting new people. While this did thwart my original goal of being one thousand times more social than ever before, it did not stop me from making new friends—which, in retrospect, was the root of what I wanted to do anyway.

I think everyone would agree that freshman and sophomore year were awful. Other than the obvious, if not for the social isolation, it was the online classes or the draggingly quiet ones we came back to in 2021, and if not for either of those things, it was the constant instability. Because of this, I didn’t feel like high school truly started until my junior year.

Among other things, junior year was when I joined newspaper. It was also when school started to feel real again, which did mean more homework, but also meant that people started talking to each other again. Junior year was a period of discovery for me. I found out that I love working on the newspaper, that I only like math, and that there are a lot of very nice people at this school that I wished I had met earlier. 

During these last two years of high school, my freshman aspiration started fulfilling itself all on its own, just not in the way I had originally intended. I wasn’t reinventing myself, I was improving myself. I felt more confident and sure of myself, more excited to come to school, and more like I was emulating the person I am in my head on the outside. 

Despite the numerous hiccups during my senior year, it has ended up being the best of them all. High school is chalking up to what I wished it would be. I love all my classes, even the ones that stress me out, I’m working on projects that excite me, and I get to do this alongside so many incredible people. 

A subsequent effect of all this reflection is the gratitude that I feel for the people and opportunities I am lucky enough to have had in my life. My friends, family, teachers, and peers are truly the reason I have gotten to where I am today. At the risk of sounding corny, they are what inspire me. They remind me of all my best qualities and all the things I strive to be. 

Looking back, it is just as hard to believe that I am the same little girl as on the first day of kindergarten as it is hard to believe that I am not. It’s one of the greatest paradoxes: the changes one goes through as they age as they simultaneously remain the same person. This gives me a certain degree of hope; I am in the midst of one of the greatest periods of change in my life, but I feel confident that I will be able to hold onto what makes me myself. Despite the uncertainty and constant novelty of the near future, I know the community I have built during my time here will be there, in one way or another, through it all.