It’s pretty crazy to think that I’m graduating high school on Thursday. Today is the last day that I will ever walk the halls of VHS as a student here. I’m not really sure where the past four years have gone, but here I am looking back and reflecting on them. Being a student here at Vandegrift has taught me so many valuable lessons, some of which I learned the hard way and some I learned with grace. I made it through the ups and downs and now I can only take away memories.

One of my best and most cherished memories of VHS will always be yearbook and newspaper. As a freshman I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do and to be completely honest I didn’t really care. I signed up for journalism during my course selection because I didn’t know what else to do. I picked something random and that I thought would be easy. I ended up loving it so much that I stayed in the program all throughout high school and ended up having a spot on the editorial board of both the yearbook and newspaper for my junior and senior years. Although sometimes I felt as though I needed a break from room 1609 I have enjoyed every minute of it.

While I have had a lot of good times here, looking back there are lots of things I could have done differently. There are so many people at Vandegrift and I spent my high school career thinking that I knew a lot of people here until just recently. While I do know a lot of names, and which face that name belongs to, I have realized that I don’t actually know very many people on a personal level. I wish that I would have taken the time to get to know more people at school and taken the time make more friends at VHS. I also wish I had joined more clubs. Other than journalism I wasn’t super involved in school. This school has a lot of fun and interesting clubs to join and I wish that I had taken the time to join them.

All in all, my experience here has been a good one. With all the experience I’m taking away I hope that others will make the best of their time here, especially incoming seniors. Your time here is coming to a close quicker than you think and very soon you won’t be able to get it back. You might miss this more than you think.