Grace Fuechtmann

High school is so weird. Each year, we lose ourselves completely, only to find ourselves again, sometimes stronger, sometimes even more precariously planted than before, as we wait for the cycle to start anew. It’s exhausting, really. But it’s what makes high school so special.

RB has shaped me into the person I am. I’ve spent most of my time here in the choir room and auditorium, learning the arts of music, acting, and personhood. The theater program taught me the value of hard work, determination, and community, and the choir program gave my life direction–in a few months, I’m off to college to learn how to teach music. What we have here is so unbelievably special, and I am so lucky to have been part of it all for four beautiful years.

It’s easy to look back on the long hours of after-school rehearsals and the shedding of more than a few tears over a Calc assignment–not to mention the global crisis we all lived through and are now pretending not to be traumatized by–and think that these last few years have been mostly bad. But the cycle of losing ourselves closes with our refinding. When you feel the strength return to your soul, and you feel more yourself than ever before (whatever that even means), that is what high school is about.

My time in Clarion has pushed me out of my comfort zone: it’s quite nerve wracking to write things that will be read by who knows how many people. To me, it’s way scarier than performing. In theater, you have fifty people around you, holding you up, ready at any moment to catch you if you fall. In journalism, it’s you and a Chromebook against the world. It’s an exercise in vulnerability that I was not expecting going into this year, but I am so grateful to have had this experience this year.

I’ve completed the cycle enough times now to feel fully ready to move on to college, but I’d be lying if I said the thought of not coming back here next year doesn’t make my stomach drop and my throat tighten just a little. This school is everything I know, and I owe to it everything that I am. Paws up.