I am a firm believer in the phenomenon that everything – the good, the bad and in-between – happens for a distinct reason. It’s a difficult reality, so we often want to curse the universe or greater powers-that-be for making us deal with what seem like unnecessary hardships. But we learn, and therefore we grow. And we are all the better for it.

When I came to MRHS, I had just left my safe space. The friends I had been with for 4 years were what felt like a world away, and I was left wandering. 

I wandered into the arms of my first high school boyfriend who helped me come out of the box I made for myself to hide in. When the walls broke down, I was left vulnerable, but I had a fresh slate to foster life-changing relationships. 

I made an effort to interact with my peers as much as my social anxiety would allow. I learned my limits in Mrs. Jewett’s Honors Biology and I learned how to break and expand them in Mr. Prey’s Human Anatomy and Physiology. 

I learned lessons of love from my second relationship, the most important one being that love is tricky. You can never do it perfectly and you will make mistake after mistake. But when you’ve found that person- your person- you discover that even the most brutal of wrong-doings have a way of being forgiven. With that, I have come to know how life is a series of journey’s. Sometimes you decide to join paths with a beautiful soul and halfway through they may decide to leave. The most you can do is look them in the eye’s and say, “Thank you for the adventure. Now go have a new one.” I can happily say I’ve had some good adventures. 

There will never be more you can learn from a textbook than you can learn from the world around you. People change people: secret of life. I learned that from a little Disney Channel show called Girl Meets World that I watched when I was younger. They were right. Every encounter and every relationship has a lasting impact on your life. I was certainly shaped by the friends I made, lost, and still have with me. I am thankful for the laughter and the loud fights and the pouring tears. I am thankful for the broken hearts, and the moments I thought my whole world was crumbling into oblivion. I’m still here and I’m okay. Because when I open the book and look at previous chapters, I’ll remember the long hugs, phone calls, good morning texts, and spontaneous dates. I’ll remember the late night drives, ear rattling music, and great conversations.

Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero: a phrase infamously expressed by Roman poet Horace, and brought to me by Mr. Keating, played by Robin Williams in my favorite movie Dead Poets Society. It translates to “pluck the day, trusting as little as possible in the next one,” and better known as, “seize the day”.

You know that feeling when you get so lost in whatever you’re doing that no matter how long you planned to spend doing it, you look up and 6 hours has passed? The sun is up, you’re exhausted, and you can’t quite remember when you lost track of time. That is high school. That is life. 

And maybe that is the way it’s supposed to be. Maybe we’re supposed to lose track, and 4 years is supposed to feel like 6 hours and also a lifetime.

But did you do all you could have done? That is the question. Did you laugh, cry and experience loss, and love? Can you say that you not only made it, but lived through it? That is carpe diem. When you’ve figured it out, you’ll know, because you will never have to wake up and wonder what would’ve happened had you taken a chance. You will learn how to control fear, doubt, uncertainty, and insecurity so that you may live, and live deliberately. 

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

– Henry David Thoreau