Senior Column: Greta Nepstad

If that cheesy saying about how high school being the best part of your life is true, then I’m screwed. Not that I had a particularly bad high school experience. In fact, there are memories that I am extremely fond of. However, when I graduate, I don’t want to stand there in my blue robes and grieve about how my best years are behind me.

I want to celebrate.

I want to celebrate because I’m going to college. I was extremely fortunate during my childhood because I always knew that if I wanted to go to college, my parents would help me. They’re not paying for my entire college education, but they are helping, and that’s all I could ever ask for.

I want to celebrate because I made it out of high school with good self-esteem, even after being called “average”, and occasionally “below average,” by these things called report cards. I was ranked among my peers, told exactly how many people were apparently smarter than me and how many were supposedly dumber. I was packed in a building with 1,900 other kids my age, being compared to them by complete strangers, and I made it through.

I want to celebrate because I completed three years on the Harbinger staff. I’ve been to school for an interview at 6 a.m. and I’ve stayed at deadline until 10 p.m. There were times I wanted to quit because, “Oh God that would be so easy.” It would be so easy not have a deadline, or an interview, or a list of edits to fix or a page to design. But you see, there’s a certain satisfaction that comes with achieving something that has value to you. I value the awards I’ve won more than I’ll ever value an A in class, and I’ll value the friends I’ve made for years to come. When I stood teary-eyed outside of room 521 on May 1 and tried to decide for the ninth time where to go to college, it was Harbinger staffers that told me it was going to be okay. It was Tate who stuck his head out the door and told me that life will go on.

I want to celebrate because life will go on despite my grade in Algebra II my sophomore year. Because my heart kept beating and my lungs kept pumping even after I wasn’t invited to be a part of NHS. Because I was never asked to a school dance, but went anyway. Because I never came close to being on the junior varsity cross country team, but still ran for four years. Because my friends and I are all off to college and because I have a wonderful family that will support me no matter what. I reject that saying about high school being the best years of my life because I know it to be false. The future is scary and there’s nothing I can do about that, at least not today. But there’s greatness out there — it can’t be contained by four years of high school.