All good things must come to an end, the saying goes. That’s certainly true. By the time you read this, summer vacation will be over; everyone in my generation will have begun another school year. Yet for me and many of my friends, this new school year marks another sort of “end” as well. We’re beginning our senior year of high school.
Shouldn’t I say that with a bit more enthusiasm? “SENIOR YEAR!!! WE’RE ALMOST DONE!!! EVERYTHING’S EASY AND WE GET TO PARTY EVERY NIGHT! NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
(On a possibly related note, during his trip to Alaska, President Obama not only sounded the alarm on climate change but also on the environment’s severe lack of exclamation points. Someone’s been using too many, it seems.)
Of course, that’s all a farce; there’s plenty to worry about. Many of us are still taking SAT tests, and thus have to know how to define words such as farce and should be using them in sentences. And I’m not taking the SAT again myself, but am a staunch cheerleader for anyone who is. We’ve also got AP classes—which stands for “Awfully Punishing,” um, I mean, “Advanced Placement.” I’m sure they won’t be that bad—but they’re not meant to be a cakewalk. We’ve got all of our classes and clubs and commitments and three hours of sleep to juggle, just like every other year, but with a harder workload. And to top it all off, there’s college applications and financial forms like the FAFSA and admissions essays to write and so on. In other words, if we get to party every night, it’ll be for five seconds in our bedrooms after we finish a particularly tricky calculus problem.
(The President also spoke about the dangers that the overuse of fossil fuels and acronyms such as SAT, AP and FAFSA can do to the environment. Meanwhile, you’re probably wondering: where does Oren get his news from?)
And on top of all that, the end is coming. It’s not this ominous apocalypse that’s creeping closer, but it’s… an end. The end of high school, the end of four long but rewarding years, the end of an era. And then begins the next chapter.
“Next chapter”—it sounds so vague, but for me, the future’s pretty vague right now. Sure, I’d love to end up at [REDACTED] or [REDACTED], but who knows what could end up happening? (I redacted the names of the potential colleges there both for humorous effect and because it doesn’t really matter for this article.) Everything feels like it’s in flux. I don’t know where I’ll end up; given how many people apply for any of the colleges I’m looking at, it’s a shot in the dark anywhere. And what about doing a year in Israel? I’d love to go for a year, but there’s so many factors surrounding doing a gap year that are beyond my control that I honestly don’t know if I’ll be able to. I hope I can, but I want to be realistic. What happens will happen; it’s all in God’s hands, and I believe it’s all for the best.
But that brings me back to senior year. With the future uncertain, it’s up to those of us beginning senior year to not forget about the present. It’ll be a tough year—and yes, junior year is notoriously hard and we survived, but still. We’ll have our ups and downs, our good grades and our Cs, our successful club meetings and the ones only two people show up to. (To be fair, that could still be successful!) But it’s all going to be tinged by the fact that this is the beginning of the end for us. We’ve only got one more year before we all go our separate ways.
That’s why I’m resolving to make this year count, both for the future and for the present. I’ll certainly put a lot of work into my college applications and Israel research and so on. But I’ll also focus on classes, clubs, and most of all, friendships. This is the last year I’ll have with my school community, with a group of 400+ people across four grades who have accepted me and have been there for me, and especially my grade, a friendly, caring group that has kept me going even when the going’s been rough. I want to make it all count. And I hope all of us facing any sort of end—senior year or elsewhere—can make those endings be significant. After all, we don’t always remember the beginnings, but we always remember the endings.
Oren Oppenheim, 17, is a rising senior at Ramaz Upper School in Manhattan and lives in Fair Lawn, NJ. He spends his free time writing and reading, and hopes to become a published novelist and a journalist. He attended the BIMA Arts program at Brandeis University this past summer, majoring in creative writing and minoring in animation. You can email him at [email protected] and see his photography at facebook.com/orenphotography.
By Oren Oppenheim
