The weather in Northeast Ohio is finally warming up and calming down, which is great with June just around the corner. And with June comes summer, which means school will be out. As always, I’m looking forward to it. But there’s something special about vacation this year.
The start of summer also serves as the end of a chapter in my life. Senior year will officially be over, and I will be leaving the familiar halls of Bedford High School as a student for the last time. There will be plenty of tears as I say goodbye to beloved teachers, and plenty of hugs as friends begin to follow their own paths. I’ll certainly be sad to leave the people and places that wrote down so many memories in my yearbook.
However, there will be some relief on my part. I’ve been aching to break out of those confining walls, where everyone has been rereading the same page for the past four years. Finally, after the last exam and the long walk across the stage of Severance Hall to receive my diploma, I will be able to turn that page.
Ahead of me lies the adventure of college, and beyond that, the vast expanse of the real world. The lines I’ve been stuck between will be erased, and I’ll be exposed to the glories and the terrors of a blank sheet of paper. I have no idea what’s going to come out of the pen, no outline that will show me what’s on the next page, and nothing but desire to keep me pushing forward. I have no clue how I’m going to pay for college, or if I really know what I want to do with my life. But I’m ready to face the questions and the challenges. I think I’ve always been ready.
My life has been spent preparing for this chapter in my story, establishing the characters and the plot. Perhaps my time at Baldwin-Wallace will be the climax, the turning point, and everything after that- a career, a family, retirement- well, perhaps that could be my resolution. But what if instead of a single novel, my life turns into a series? Each segment of life, from high school through to retirement, it’s own book, with individual plot lines and diverse characters, conflicts, and climaxes? Hopefully, my story has more words than can be contained in a single cover.
And so it is with this frame of mind, the determination to create a saga, that I head towards graduation. I will walk out of Severance Hall and into an empty notebook, ready to be filled with the stories of my life.
Write Up Review 
As an avid reader myself, I promise you that your high school career is NOT the climax of your life. Readers are lifelong learners, and I can tell just by the questions you are asking yourself that you will not settle for a life that topped out by 18. My own life has definitely been more in the nature of a series, and if you go that route you will never be bored, and there will always be something to look forward to. Congratulations on your graduation, and good luck with whatever comes next!
Wow, such an incredible article and I agree with it for the most part except I do agree that high school is not the end of your series. It’s not the best one in the series that you want to pick up over and over again while the rest of the books are just there to fill in space and establish the ending. All of us are about to embark on new journeys ahead of us. You, myself, and everyone else. Some people I do wonder just how they will make it, with the behaviors you and I have both witnessed as we endured Bedford High School. I just wonder… is high school as far as they will go and if it is their climax. But for you, our friends, and hopefully myself this isn’t the end. It’s going to be great and instead of the predictable easy read of high school there will be twists and turns of college, dramatic cliff hangers as we all know the drama doesn’t cease to end in high school unfortunately. We are all off onto greater things, whatever we may dream up and our passions may be we CAN do it despite what circumstances may bring – college fees, nay sayers, and a crappy economy. We all can do it, I truly have the belief that if we really want it we can go after it.
My mother always used to tell me that your education and that your passion in life was your lottery ticket. Everyone has a lottery ticket it’s just how they use it determines if they are able to reach the jackpot. Well Caelie, I got my lottery ticket in hand and it feels like a good number! 🙂