The first time we step foot into Chardon High School, students question everything about our future. 

Am I still going to have friends at the end of this? 

Are we going to be together forever? 

Am I going to make it?

 Why does this building smell like everyone’s body odor and mixed berry vape juice? 

All these questions and yet nobody will know the answer until you sit down during senior year and realize that everything has changed. Friends, relationships, grades, and most of all you. 

Throughout your high school experience, you form into the person you will be in the future. From a nervous optimistic freshman to a witty independent senior, things change and things happen. Not only do you, the person that is changing, notice the transition but so do the teachers that you encounter through the years.

“Freshmen have consistently ‘acted’ like freshmen. Juniors have consistently ‘acted’ like juniors, etc., ” said English teacher Joy Tersigni. She said she has seen it all in the nine years she has been teaching at CHS. When answering these questions, she looked back on her own high school experience, and said “I am a completely different person than who I was when I left Geneva High School at 17 years old.”

As students, we have to take into consideration what others are going through and find common ground. The worst and best times have been monitored by others even when we weren’t paying attention. All the time you thought what truly matters and affects your whole life now seems to be simple nothings of the past. 

From the student’s perspective, they are able to look back on their mistakes and triumphs. They make it their stepping stones and their history, a part of their story. Students coming into their last year of school now look forward to the future, to college, to life beyond these walls.

“I never really thought about it[the future], the change, but now that I think about it I laugh about my previous years,” said one anonymous Chardon senior. “I was very nervous and wanting to fit in.” 

Reality hits after high school, and we notice the process of becoming adults. Where did that time fly? Students think of what their next step is: college, secondary school, living out the dream, or living at home to try and figure things out. 

The future is approaching fast; the truth hurts. While we rush to get in those last hurrahs before the time comes to depart, we discuss the sweet memories of the past years. The past is our past and we get to look back and how it formed us into the people that we are.  All we can do is move forward and smile through our mistakes, failures, successes, and happy times.