Cue the Wild Applause

Let's Give it Up for the Class of '08!

I had my last day of high school class today. I should be thrilled. I hate high school class. But in all honesty, I’m kind of sad. How in the hell can I be done with high school? I’ve spent four years at Arrupe Jesuit, and granted, a good amount of my time there has been pretty torturous, but even so, I’ve come to really love that place. In spite of all the bitchy friends, crappy math teachers, and crippling amounts of homework, it really breaks my heart to be leaving. I spent my whole freshman year there as an awkward and friendless misfit. Now I actually feel like I belong. I still hate it sometimes, but I’m at home there. I’m comfortable with the people. I no longer worry so much about the way I act around them, and I’m not obsessed with making people like me. My entire class of 55 kids has grown close enough over these past four years that most of us are pretty damn comfortable with each other. We know each other, and as my classmate Adrian said at our senior retreat, we’ve all got each others’ backs, and we all know that. At school, I’m happy just chillin’ anywhere at all—in the gym watching boys shoot hoops, in the lobby joking with whoever else might be there waiting for their Mom to pick them up, or on the bus laughing my ass off on the way to work. I love most of my classmates at and even some of the teachers. It’s so frightening and shocking to be leaving them all behind.

This isn’t to say that I’m not excited for my future…I am. It’s just that I know virtually nothing about it. I know I’m going to DU. And I plan on studying writing. But aside from that, I know absolutely nothing about what my life will become. I’m saying goodbye to almost everyone I know. I certainly hope to keep in touch with my closest friends, but there’s no way our relationships are going to be the same as they are now. We won’t be able to talk through math class or waste time in the computer lab anymore. We will no longer spend hours on the school bus together or laugh our asses off at lunch while picking at DJ the lunch lady’s infamous “tater tot casserole” or glorious “chocolate surprise.”

I don’t know how much I’ll miss high school…but I will definitely remember its high points. Today, for instance, we seniors were pretty excited that it was our last day of class. While the community aspect of school is fabulous, the academic part sucks. So we were pretty damn glad to know that we would never again have to sit through another treacherous 65 minutes of high school calculus.

In third period civics, the two social studies teachers I’ve had presented us with mix CDs…full of songs and sound clips from the past four years. Something about hearing the Neighborhood Map Machine theme song and a stuttering lawyer from the film My Cousin Vinny made me want to cry. High school seems so much more wonderful in retrospect than it does when you’re actually living through it. The past four years were at times a haze of exhaustion and angst, but I think that, overall, I really and truly loved my experience. I’ve turned into one of those people I never thought I would be – the kind of happy girl who loves high school.

Today, as I mentioned, seniors were very happy. In fact, we were ecstatic. We spent most of the day cheering. Literally. My classmates have become very fond of applause in the past few months. I like to think that this clapping obsession started when I won “The General’s Award” for volleyball. When our athletic director approached me at the beginning of a theology class to give me my award, my hyperactive class erupted into wild cheers, which continued for about 10 minutes. They even started excitedly chanting my name –- all for me having a good attitude on the volleyball team. When the cheering finally began to subside, Mr. Lovinguth the athletic director came back into our classroom with the letter that I’d also earned. The classroom exploded once again with whooping and screaming.

Most of us got detention that day.

Since then, Arrupe’s class of 2008 has been full of enthusiastic cheerers. A few days ago, as my civics teacher walked through the crowded cafeteria, senior Victor Soto loudly announced, “Mr. Dexter, everybody!!” The senior class cheered like we’d just won the lottery as Mr. Dexter humbly grinned and waved his way through the cafeteria.

So we like cheering. And we’ve gotten really good at it. We spent most of our lunch period today cheering for most of the teachers who walked by, except for the assistant principal who strutted through the cafeteria like he was expecting applause. We cheered through fifth and sixth periods. We cheered after school, whooping and screaming, “OH-EIGHT! OH-EIGHT! OH-EIGHT!” Some girls even paraded with our Dean of Students, running wildly through the hallways after the last bell.

Then seniors started going home, the insanity subsided, and I realized, Wow. I’m kind of sad. I’m just about done with high school. And I’m totally stunned.