Bottom of the 12th: Senior Sendoff

On this Memorial Day night, on a much appreciated day off from school, I will do the last homework of my high school life. When I scribble the last number onto my stats sheet, I will have finished the last of my after-school busy work.

What a great feeling it is to finally be able to say that I am reaching the “lasts” of high school. I had my last Monday and Friday of school last week and will have my last full day Tuesday. This time next week, I will probably have been awake for a mere handful of hours with little worry greater than finding the most efficient way to prepare a meal.

This week brought a lot of clarity to my final grades for the year as I finished up my final psychology project and took my Spanish Proficiency Exams.

I have one final Spanish presentation for Tuesday and a statistics test for Thursday and then I am finally done. I have little doubt that after these few remaining tasks I will spend much of the first part of summer shedding myself of any responsibility.

Tuesday will also mark the final time spent as manager of the lacrosse team. We are having a fundraising banquet to cap off a fun season. The highlight of the year came last week when the Royals participated in their section game. They trailed by two goals with just over a minute left in the game and were able to score twice—forcing an overtime period where they won in sudden-death fashion.

This Sunday, I went to my third straight Soundset Festival in a row. For those of you who don’t know, Soundset is an all-you-can-hear, day-long, hip-hop blowout. The concert features all of the local hip-hop artists that I like so much plus a lot of great out of town acts for flavor.

It lasts from 11 a.m. to a scheduled end time of 7:30 p.m. But in reality, the show doesn’t stop until about 9 p.m. With the weekend rains, the ground was very damp and there was even standing water in the crowd making for a very muddy experience.

Soundset has been the one big event that I have attended each year of my high school days and, although I plan to attend it again in the future, I will always remember it as a high school event. The last one was the best one as the headliner, Big Boi from “the Beatles of Hip- hop” Outkast, rocked a great set and local group and main attraction Atmosphere played a great combination of both old and new music.

That event, with senior skip day on Friday, made for a memorable weekend and an ideal way to send off my pre-adult years.

I now must go finish my homework and spend some time with my grandmother, who was kind enough to make the trip from Rapid City to celebrate my graduation.