Opinionated: Living In The Moment

With graduation less than two months away, most of my senior friends seem to be itching to leave.

They’re picking roommates, laboring over RoomSurf and Facebook to decide the perfect match to spend their first year away from home with. They’re finding their dorm rooms and making cute Instagrams about their commitments to colleges across the country.

In the process, every senior I know is fixated on tomorrow. All they talk about is the future — what they’ll be doing over spring break, over summer, next year when they leave. They’re stuck in the future.

Is it bad that I don’t want that? Don’t get me wrong, I’m jealous. I would love to only have a few short, sweet months ahead of me before I begin the insanity of college. I would love to be out of the hell of junior year and to have the security of knowing that my work in high school had paid off.

At the same time, I don’t want to live in the future. I don’t want to focus so intensely on the four years after I leave East that I forget to enjoy the year and a half I have left.

I’m not a strong proponent of the idea that the four years of high school are the best years of your life. I would like to believe that every year becomes increasingly better; perhaps not on an exponential scale, but at least making a linear progression as time went on.

But looking back, my time at East has been the most fun I’ve had in my life. In the midst of Calculus tests and tapas for AHAP, I’ve made connections with some of the most intelligent, dedicated and hilarious teachers I have ever met. Despite cursing deadlines, AP style errors and broadcasting glitches, this year has been our most successful on The Harbinger.

I’m not saying these will be the best years of my life — but they are my best as of yet. I don’t want to miss a single football game or theatre performance. I want to enjoy my senior year, my year of “lasts” — last broadcasts, last deadlines, last team dinners and nights in the student section.

As much as I look forward to the day that I throw my cap into the air, I want this year to be special. And as cliche as it is, I want to live the next year in the moment — because it’s always great to be a Lancer.