A Nostalgic Goodbye from an Incoming Senior

As of Tuesday, there were exactly five full days and three half days left of school. But who's counting? Only the juniors, of course. We're getting ready to kiss goodbye to the most stressful year of our academic lives and happily welcome a  year of transitions.

While I'm psyched to leave behind my underclassmen years, the whole situation is eerie to me. I'm stuck with a slew of emotions. A part of me wants to redo junior year after all that I've learned, another part claims I have no regrets and my soon-to-be senior self is screaming indifference. No matter what, I don't want to bring myself to look back.

Senior year seems so surreal to me. After briefly attending Senior Ball with a fellow InFlight journalist, I was faced with the reality that the beginning of the end is in reach. I'm ready to apply to colleges and adopt the rewards of being on top of the high school food chain.

Despite my always lasting taste of bittersweet optimism, I'm mostly nostalgic. It's weird for me to think that I was once a freshman admiring the seniors before me, praying that I'd reach a fraction of their eminent greatness.  Now - and this is what scares me - underclassmen look up to me. I've unknowingly taken on that leadership position. It never crossed my mind that one day I'd have that prestige.

Another reason I'm uncannily nostalgic this season is because I'm seeing my senior friends leave Foothill. This isn't my first set of senior companions who'll leave Pleasanton. But it is the first time I've felt connected to such a group, probably because I've spent the past three years with these students.

I admit I owe most of my sentimental sentiments to my journalism class.

According to Adam Bailey, this year's sports editor, "We're a dysfunctional family." And according to me, there's nothing more beautiful than that.

I could write pages about each individual senior. But I'll settle for this column. These are going to be the seniors I miss the most, the last one's I'll miss: the ones who reassured me day in and day out that I'd be just fine when college application season rolled around, edited my English essays since freshman year and rolled around the classroom with me laughing about nothing and everything.

They are the people I looked up to, and I valued their opinions all throughout my high school experience. It's like I hold them on a pedestal, and, quite frankly, they deserve it and so much more. Maybe that's why I'm afraid of taking their place. No one could and no one will do it better than they.

The most I can hope for next year is that my class of 2012 will be memorable enough to earn such ever-lasting praise and love. Class of 2012's legacy will reign supreme, no doubt, but it's all thanks to those who came before us.