…And We’re Back

Adaora Ede, Editor in Chief

Admittedly, it took me at least two attempts to get up on the morning of the first day of school. I mean, how would it have been simple to wake up, knowing that I’ve regularly woken at least four or five hours after that for the past three months and spent the rest of those days in a pseudo-somatic state, aided entirely by the fact that I wore pajamas like eighty percent of the time. But when it comes to starting the school year, putting on real people clothes is only half the problem for most students.

It feels surreal to be here, to finally be a senior looking forward to graduation after muddling through the past 3 years of high school. For me, it’s finally being Editor-in-Chief for a journalism section I care so dearly about and applying to my dream schools. For most seniors, a lot of it is about getting out of this hellhole and Senior Week, among other things. That’s not to say that senior year is the only special year of high school. Volunteering at freshman orientation the day before school started, I sensed many familiar emotions in the air: fear, panic, excitement, and anxiety, feelings that I personally experienced as a pimply ninth grader in 2013. Freshmen have to carry the burden of navigating a new building. If I’m being completely honest, I found sophomore year an irrelevant year that does not take up that much space in my memory. At least you can dwell in the fact that you’re not in 9th grade anymore! No bad feelings towards freshmen, again. Junior year is oft considered the most important year of high school as colleges weigh your grades and standardized test scores from the grade as important to admission, but I saw it as a great opportunity to establish my superiority over freshmen as a newly-minted underclassmen by cutting them in the lunch line. To each his own, however.  

In some way, I’m sure I’ve been secretly expectant of that first last day through most of my school-attending career. Ideally, I would have been greeted by a fluffy stack of pancakes and a new car on that Thursday morning, but maple oatmeal and the bus had to suffice. I’m not sure if I had been anticipating a spiritual experience when I was getting ready that morning but I felt as if I ached for a silent confirmation that everything would be okay for me.

Half of first period on the first day was exhausted in trying to force myself to believe that being here was a dream, a nightmare of sorts, of course. Maybe that was solely because I had been using most of my valuable time during the summer reading up on the Mandela Effect (GOOGLE THIS IF YOU HAVEN’T HEARD OF IT BEFORE). And also maybe it was because I was in Calculus BC taking a test (on the first day!) and trying not to propel my body out of a window. Yet truly, I think it may have had something to do with the realization that Thursday was “the first day of the rest of life” as a wise man named Mr. Witkowski once proclaimed to my homeroom.
So as we grudgingly recover from the first day shock, I send us all a greeting, whether you be teacher, student or other faculty. I have a feeling that the 2016-2017 school year will work out to be a fabulous year for everyone, but mostly me because I get to leave early. Cue the celebratory horns. Welcome back to Bel Air and the surrounding areas, Bobcats!