As I’m writing this, one day has passed since my dreadful last Monday as a Lancer. Three days have passed since my last prom as a Lancer. Twenty-six days have passed since (hopefully) my last illegal parking ticket as a Lancer. And 1,366 days have past since my very first day as a Lancer. The first seemed just as close as the last. It’s a phrase us seniors have been hearing a lot of lately: “That felt like yesterday” – because it does.
I get freaked out about time, and how little we have of it. Wake up, go to school, come home, nap, maybe do some homework. Eat. Sleep. Repeat. It’s no wonder we feel like something that happened months, or even years ago, feels like it happened yesterday because of our monotonous daily routines.
We start our high school career with endless amounts of time. We imagine how the rest of our lives will play out. Would I will make varsity volleyball? Will I get asked to homecoming? Where will I go to college? Will I finish this senior column in time for my last ever Wednesday night deadline? We worry and ponder all the little things in life with what seems to be a lifetime ahead of us.
But here we are, the class of 2016, getting our yearbooks and the final issue of the Harbinger that we will ever be a part of, and we think “Where has the time gone?”
For me, time has gone into countless nights watching Netflix when I should have been studying for that math test. It’s gone into hours of shooting sports photos and praying I wouldn’t get trampled by a player. It’s gone into foolish scavenger hunts around town with friends knowing we’d talk about that night forever. It’s gone into cramming nine best friends into a tiny, five-seater car, just so we could make it to the football game together and quoting “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” for the majority of the SHARE hour.
And finally, the time has gone into the 51 Harbinger Deadlines I have been a part of. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.
All the things I have put my time and effort into are what I love to do, and what I want to be remembered by when I leave this place we call Shawnee Mission Wonderful. So, to the freshman who thinks you have a lot of time left, here is what I say to you: Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around for a while, you could miss it. OK, that may be from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” but you get the point.