Elections

We had the speeches for student government elections yesterday. I don’t think it had really hit me until just then that next year is our last year in the Academy. I was sitting there and I realized…wow this is the last time I am going to sit here and listen to my classmates give speeches about why they should be president of our class.
Then I started zoning out and thinking about all the other lasts I’ve already had. We had our last first day of school as underclassmen; last Christmas break before applying to college; second-to-last exams and actually caring what we got…
I had flashbacks to junior school. Memories of playing on barwick, being thrilled to be the person in my class who got to go in the morning and carry all the juice boxes for my class’s snack time from the Winnie office back to the classroom. I had forgotten about that time me and my friends rode bikes down that huge hill on Barwick up by the maze, and in 4th grade when we went to the Big Island and I thought it was SO cool that I was on an airplane with my class!
Back then, graduation was not even thinkable. It seemed as though I’d be at this school forever. But now, its only a little more than a year away then I can no longer say proudly what school I go to when someone inquires as to where I…well, belong so to speak. No, my name will belong to a University, which one I still don’t know. I will say I go to “Insert super-expensive-prestigious-if-you-don’t-go-here-you-fail-at-life University” name here. I will be a college student, (almost) totally on my own in a big world that I don’t really understand that well, away from my parents and everyone and everything that is really familiar to me. Independence. I will gain independence, and im guesing also a deep appreciation for the opportunities I had while I was here. I have gone here since kindergarten…a purist, you could call me, but I have never had to experience a change so dramatic that I was thrown into an environment where I didn’t know where to go or what to do.
It just surprised me that our time in the Academy is slowely winding down. After 12 years of the college-prep experience, what is it gonna be like to see what that actually did for us? I want to find out.