When we were kids, we’d sit and watch movies about how our senior year in high school would be full of nonstop fun and parties. However, as time passed, we started to see that this image from film was not entirely true. Now that we are just months from finishing high school, we begin to reflect and think about what has really happened. For some, it is somewhat like what the movies portray, but I’m guessing that for the majority of seniors the hype was quite a bit out of proportion with reality.

Now I might just be dull, but the hype of our “last year” has turned out to be pretty underwhelming. We were promised half-day schedules, classes we didn’t even need to graduate, the royal treatment. It’s funny, thinking back on my freshman year when I couldn’t wait to be a senior. However, now, with only four months left to go, graduating from high school doesn’t seem like that big of a deal.

Perhaps this feeling is just because everyone in my family has gone on to college or vocational school. In my life plan, graduating from high school was just a step in the journey, not a milestone. For some, high school graduation might be a joyous occasion, but society expects most – if not all – of us to go on to some kind of “higher education.” In today’s world, a high school diploma is important, but not like in was in times past.

From my senior-year experience, senior year has been rather subdued. To be fair, I am not part of the party crowd, nor am I overly active in the school-spirit crowd, so that has tempered some of my experiences. I have to believe that many seniors can’t wait to get out and that, rather than celebrating the last 4 years, they simply want to look ahead to the next four.

Think about it. For those going to college, the next four years promise experiences bigger than the senior banquet; experiences more memorable than the kickoff to football season. There is just so much waiting for us outside these Paint Branch walls. In every high school, many students experience the glory days of high school that we see on TV and film, but for so many others these years are far less glorious. These years are just the beginning. College, a gap year, military service, or work – these are the futures that lie ahead of us. So much waits for us and, in these uncharted waters, we can really do anything we want. There is no stopping this generation of young people, though we do head out into the world at such an unstable time.

So, while I don’t understand the hype of senior year, I do understand the hype associated with the future, because I can see all of us going on to do much more that identifies us than just being the senior class of 2017.