Senior Moments Column: Turning the Tassel

When a student first enters the hallways of high school, there is always one thought that lingers. It’s not “I am nervous about schoolwork” or “What is for lunch.” The thought that completely consumes every high school student until the very last day is that they are ready to graduate.

As someone who has just completed the ceremony, though, I have had a change of heart, because it may not be all it seems.

These past four years of high school have been very interesting, to say the least. As a freshman, me and my class went through COVID-19; as a sophomore, I seemed to finally get some view of normal. Junior year, my high school combined with the middle school into one building which created absolute chaos, and then my senior year was filled with enough stress from preparing for the future that I thought I would never get out.

Every year had its own beast, so it made sense a student like me who had gotten through all of that would be ready to be done. It’s so weird looking at it now because of how wrong I was.

Going into my final week of school was absolutely terrifying. At first, it was all fun, as we decorated our caps and I finished writing my valedictorian speech for graduation.

Then it came to the last two days before the big ceremony, and everything changed. Instead of just fun and games, we got down to business. We began to run through the ceremony, practicing how we would walk out and the music we would use.

Fear hit me like a bag of bricks when I had to practice walking across the stage. Before then, it was just something I had dreamed of. Kind of like saying you want to be a doctor when you grow up, it’s something you can picture, but it's so far off, you don’t have to commit to the idea when you say it. I had been talking nonstop about graduating since freshman year, but when I finally got on the stage, I wanted to do nothing more than rip a hole in time and jump back to when my only worry was turning in homework.

That feeling of fear did eventually fade into bittersweetness as I went through the real ceremony. I got to see my classmates walk across the stage in a show of final victory, I got to give a speech to commemorate me and my classmates’ time in school, and I got to spend an entire evening doing fun things with friends at Project Graduation. The entire experience went by so quickly, but the feeling of completeness never came. I felt so accomplished, but I also felt like I lost a huge part of myself, like part of my innocence and childhood went away, leaving room for many new feelings.

Graduating has definitely been life-altering, because even in the span of the past few days I have spent as a high school graduate, I have had to begin to find a new identity. I am no longer a high school student, an immature teenager who has to stay up until dawn doing chemistry, or an athlete who has to balance a hectic lifestyle. I am still me, but almost every aspect of my life has changed.

As scary as it has been these past few days, I finally feel ready to begin finding this new me. The one who will be attending college and beginning a new life all on her own. I know it will be new and unfamiliar, but just like I had to turn the tassel to end one era of my life, I must turn a new leaf to begin another.

Lilly Johnson is a recent graduate of Charleston High School in Charleston, Mo. She has lived in Southeast Missouri most of her life and loves to travel with her youth group, jam to musicals and BTS, and paint during the late hours of the night.