Even though I am currently experiencing my last year of high school, I just can’t seem to view myself as a senior. Of course, I’ve changed and grown as a person; I’ve abandoned the tennis shoes, I cry about four times less per week, and I now operate a moving vehicle (against the common good of society), but it’s strange to think I’m no longer that young, starry-eyed freshman. No, in fact, I’m in the very position of former upperclassmen, the ones I used to look up to in sheer awe, admiration, and well, terror.
Terror seems out of place there, but let me explain. When I first started to join extracurriculars at Westview and really interact with juniors and seniors, I held tremendous respect for them. They were older, polished, and seemingly perfect, having everything figured out and carrying themselves with a kind of subtle authority that was implied, rather than explicit. I say this, specifically referencing those in leadership roles, as it was the upperclassmen running the organizations I had joined; they seemed to do so so eloquently and effortlessly.
Still, I was absolutely terrified of them.
It wasn’t that they were outwardly scary, because they most certainly were not. The seniors and juniors I interacted with during my freshman year were some of the kindest, sweetest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. But, I’ve phrased that inherently wrong, as that’s where the problem lay; I never actually really knew them. There seemed to be this innate divide between us, this ominous, invisible line that drew itself harshly, restricting any possible form of deeper connection, and in my youth, I was much too scared to walk across it. The upperclassmen just seemed so faultless, so far from my then-present self. I so desperately wanted to get to know them better, but I was just so intimidated. Eventually, this turned into a kind of subconscious feeling of discomfort, and well, fear: fear that engendered this gaping distance between me and them.
And as I continued my journey through high school, I thought this was just normal. Once they graduated, I was a little sad I never got to be close to them, but I moved on, cowardly convincing myself that there was no way I could have.
Approaching my senior year, though I was certainly not the flawless figure I thought those former upperclassmen to be, this mindset led me to believe that I couldn’t really be close to underclassmen. I was, now, just on the other side of that line, helpless to cross it.
But, very recently, this changed.
For The Nexus, I’ve run book clubs since the start of my junior year, where I help freshmen analyze and read their novels for their Honors English class. In the beginning I did experience this kind of distanced friendliness. My groups were so lovely, yet our relationship never really built past mentor and mentee.
This year, though, my students trampled all over that perceived line. They demanded snacks, made jokes with me, and had lively, passionate conversations about the books we were reading; it didn’t at all feel like an assignment they were forced to do and I saw my love for literature reflected in them. I would come home from school and smile to see around 400 messages from a singular book talk group chat, either discussing their likes (or vehement dislikes) of their weekly reading or stressing together as a group about what the author’s message was.
Somehow, they seemed to so easily step over that barrier I had once feared to cross. No, they did backflips over something that had so impacted my life for the past four years. It was shocking to see it be this easy: had it always been this simple?
Well, perhaps it was. Perhaps, it had, all this time, been this effortless.
I realize now that this border I had built was completely senseless. And, I cannot express how grateful I am for that. As I move forward into college, I’ll take with me this valuable lesson my students taught me. To my freshmen: Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
