I was digging through a pile of old 3.5″ disks, and burned cds when I happened upon some documents from about seven years go. Buried in the rubbish was a copy of my final editorial as the editor of our highschool newspaper, The Wingspan. Here it is, in all it’s faded glory.
Everyone forms their view of life differently. Each individual’s opinion and standing point is shaped and molded based on that person’s unique, or sometimes non-unique experiences in life. We are all different, but one thing binds us together; we are the graduating class of 2002 from Henry County High School in McDonough, Georgia.
Of course, this is probably far from the most significant life-changing experience for the majority of us. It is, however, the common bond that unifies us. Not everyone was at that “killer field party,” and not everyone was there when the football team defeated Eagle’s Landing and tore down the goalpost. Every single student in the school didn’t take Anatomy and Physiology, but there are very few of us who don’t recognize the odors drifting from the science hall during second semester’s cat dissections.
As a class, we have seen events unfold in our lives that few would ever suspect. Around our nation, other students’ senior years have been marred by such tragedies as the events at Columbine, and more locally, Heritage High School. Sadly, the one world event we will most likely remember for the rest of our lives from our school years, will be the events of September 11, 2001. I remember the looks of shock on my friends faces as I worked on gathering opinions, quotes, hopes, and fears for my first real article in The Wingspan. I saw an underlying current of camaraderie that I never would have believed could exist between so many different people. Everyone had the same fears; Fears of the draft, fears of what would happen next, fears for friends or relatives who were traveling or in the military. On some level, we are all the same, I suppose, in many ways.
Tragedies aren’t the only things that have formed our personalities. Each year, many people have spent their time looking for “that special someone,” or in the case that that person had already been found, spending time with them. The social lives of those around us have formed a model for many people of what we are, what we want to be, or what we don’t want to be.
We’ve grown together. I look back, and remember my freshmen year, and like so many that have come before me, I wonder how in the world I made it this far. On the first day of my senior year, I made my way slowly into the parking lot, hesitating to park in my space. I was listening to the song “The Freshmen,” by Verve Pipe. As I listened to the words “When I was young I knew everything…I can’t believe for the life me that we would ever die for these sins. We were merely freshmen.” The song wasn’t new, it wasn’t the first time I had ever heard it. It was completely intentional. For some reason, it meant a lot to me then. I wrote a description of that morning down later in the day. It read something like this: “I arrived that morning, with a song in my head, and a girl in my heart, and not really knowing quite which meant more to me just then.” Life hasn’t been simple for us, as students, but we’ve made it through the storm.
We are the graduating class of 2002 from Henry County High School. We are just another step in the long procession of graduates. But we are each our own person. We’ve made ourselves that way. We have hopes and dreams for the future, whether we admit them to one another or ourselves or not.
It is with those hopes and dreams that each of us holds dear that I wish you luck. This year, I have ranted about etiquette, nit-picked about courtesy, and hinted at changes in attitude in my editorials. Now, as I look back with only a few days left in my high school career, I realize that I wouldn’t change a single thing. I wouldn’t take away a single moment with any of my friends; they all mean too much to me. I wouldn’t even take away a single time someone ran into me in the hallway. It would change the whole scene. I only hope that the last few years of our lives have meant as much for everyone else in the class of 2002 as they have for me.
I’m sorry if I have rambled in writing this. Sometimes it’s just hard to say goodbye to everything you know, and everyone you love. It’s just one of those things. Perhaps Lord Byron phrased it best: “Farewell! A word that must be, and hath been,- A sound which makes us linger; yet-farewell!” Fare you each well, seniors. Fare you well, Henry County High School, and the underclassmen yet to graduate. Fare you well.
