So my Editor-in-Chief Sam Aber asked me to write a Senior Goodbye. And since I consider myself to be a nice guy, I agreed to do it. It seems the issue this year was that the majority of Torch’s staff members thought that they didn’t have anything new to say. And they are probably right. But, then again, I don’t really have anything new to say either. So why am I writing this? I guess I just want to reflect on certain aspects of myself in high school. This is as good of an opportunity as any to do just that.

For the first month of my freshman year math class I was convinced I was the only freshman. That terrified me. Everybody knew each other, and I had no idea who any of those people were. Little did I know, half that class was made up of students my age I just never bothered to talk to. I talk to a lot of those people now. In fact, I consider some of them to be very good friends of mine. I’m still not very good at branching out, and it remains one of my concerns as I restart that four year cycle heading into college. I guess all I can do is wait and hope that I learned from my mistakes the first time.

Remember how everybody tells you to get involved and do something you like? Well I didn’t do that. I didn’t have a passion for journalism when I applied for Torch. My friend was applying because he wanted to do it, and that’s really the main reason I did. That and I thought it would fill that requirement of “getting involved” in high school. My friend wasn’t accepted. I think it is ironic that it had to happen that way. Needless to say, I stuck with Torch. It became something that defined me in the GBN community, and I’m happy I got to spend my last three years doing something I’ve come to really                                        enjoy: journalism.

I had the same goal for every semester of high school: to have straight A’s in all my classes and have a girlfriend at the same time. For me, that is the ultimate balance of academics and social life. I thought that if I could meet this goal, then I was truly succeeding in high school. I have never accomplished that goal. I don’t think it was unrealistic of me to think I could do it. And I think that it will be something I will keep in mind through college. I’ve never lost sleep over not accomplishing it, and it was never something that made me think if I was never able to meet that goal, I would regret it my whole life. I don’t consider myself a failure. It was just something I set out to do and never did. Oh well.

You can choose to take away what you would like from this goodbye. It was never my intention to teach the GBN community some deep lesson about high school. As you have read, I am certainly no expert on that. I just wanted to reflect on my GBN experience. It was a good experience, and now I’m done reflecting on it. Goodbye Glenbrook North.