It’s pretty hard to believe I’m two weeks from graduation and writing my Clarion senior goodbye. Since joining staff three years ago, I’ve read the senior goodbyes every year and have always looked forward to writing mine. But now that it’s here, it’s a lot harder to write than you’d think. The whole concept is so open ended it almost gives me too much creative freedom, and with all the endless possibilities to write about, it’s hard to start. At this point it’s hard to tell if it’s because I really am at a loss of words to describe my current thoughts or the more likely being I’ve just gotten incredibly lazy with anything school related.
When I think about my high school experience, I look at all four years very differently. Freshmen year almost felt like an extension of junior high at times, but at other times felt like something so much better with a lot of potential to be enjoyable. My sophomore and junior years of high school felt like one super long busy year filled with way too much work. By the end of my junior year my brain was fried and had been pushed to the limit by the middle two years of high school. And outside of school my life was like a rollercoaster, with a lot of ups and downs. I had a lot of good times, but with way too many crappy times mixed between.
Then came senior year.
Freshmen year was nice for me because my older brother was a senior that year. At the time I didn’t really understand the relaxed atmosphere of senior year, and couldn’t believe the stuff he did and got away with. I learned stuff from him that year that became useful to me a lot throughout high school, especially this year when I took a similar route with my senioritis, pushing the limits of the school’s disciplinary system to see what exactly they’d let me get away with. That’s not to say I tried to get in trouble, but I tried to get the senior experience I always heard about and I think I did. The thought, “I’m a senior I’ll get away with it” crossed my head way too many times when I was deciding whether I should get up or go back to bed, or go to my afternoon classes on a certain day. And for a while I successfully went with that system, till it all caught up to me. By the end of my little run I had gotten in trouble a lot, and probably built a not so good reputation with a lot of my second semester teachers. I guess now would probably be a good time to apologize for that. It wasn’t anything more than me taking a back seat to my senioritis, but I missed a lot of class. Shout out to Mr. Sibley for personally beating that habit out of me (figuratively of course).
For some reason I developed the habit of making friends with a lot of older kids their senior year, and through that developed a lot of interesting one year long relationships with different people. Freshmen year it was my older brother and his friends, specifically Andrew Johnson and Lucas Hackel. They showed me the ropes of high school, and helped me make a lot of friends in the process. Sophomore and junior years it came from being an officer for Best Buddies, and spending every Monday with people like Jo Jo Tabor, Kelly Sherman, and Tim Hannigan. Those times were fun, even if I wasn’t the best officer.
Clarion has also done a lot for me, and has always been a class to look forward to for the last three years. My first year on the staff was also the first year for the website, and I learned a lot from watching the senior leadership on staff from Emily Mussio, Jordan Messner, Sara Skiba, and Kieran Brennan. The next year I was a lot more comfortable in class, and had really good times with Rigo Reyes, Eddie Morrissey, George Suchy, and Mark McDonaugh. That 3rd period Clarion last year was probably the most fun class I ever had while at RB.
I also had a lot of really memorable teachers at RB and want to give them a shout out: Ms. Cabaj, Ms. Wilmot, Ms. Goldberg, Mrs. Gallagher, Mrs. Sarkady, Mr. Till, Todd, Mr. Forberg, and Mr. Beasley all had a lasting impression on me for different reasons.
This year I also spent a lot of time hanging out in the life skills room and very quickly became friends with the adult aides who work with the kids, including Nick Dragisic, Brad Paus, John Gaines, Will Sisson, and Mrs. Swan and Delzotti. Although there were perks like using their fridge and microwave, I quickly began enjoying hanging out with them and they ended up having a big impact on my senior year.
But most of all Mr. Mancoff for being dedicated to the Clarion and being responsible for developing my writing skills the last three years. And since I’m going into writing as a career I owe him a lot and thank him for that. And finally I want to thank Kate Abbatacola and Andy Jones for having major impacts on my life in and out of school for reasons known to them.
I guess looking back I accomplished a lot here the last four years, and am leaving a completely different person than when I arrived. It’s funny now that I’ve started writing I could go on forever, but all of this is ending very quickly.
College here I come, go Hoosiers.
