High School Musical, Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide, Hannah Montana. 

TV shows like these ones made me think that high school would be the most amazing and life-changing experience of my entire life. 

Now don’t get me wrong—it has been life-changing. But no amount of TV shows could prepare me for what high school would actually be like for me. 

Sure, freshman year was the “usual”—getting used to a new environment and being a small fish in a big pond—but sophomore year and onward was something that not even the best psychic could predict.

We went into quarantine. Yes, quarantine. And not like in the episode of Shake It Up! where Rocky gets stuck in quarantine and has an impromptu dance number. An actual quarantine.

This same quarantine cut my high school experience short, and it seemed like the blink of an eye. I went from a sophomore—still figuring out how to deal with friendships and thinking about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life—to a senior that was submitting college applications. All while running on an hour of sleep and Starbucks refreshers. 

It felt unreal. How did a year and a half of my life just slip away in what seemed like two seconds? 

I didn’t feel mature enough to don the title of “senior,” a word reserved in my mind for the leaders of a school and the cool kids in class. Now I was one. It felt as though I was still a sophomore and now I was supposed to be a role model for the entire school? 

I feel like myself and the rest of the Class of 2022 lost out on what were supposed to be the best years of our lives. It was as if we were part of those high school movies and the person watching just fast-forwarded through half of the show and stopped when we had reached senior year.

I came back to school for my last year of high school and everything seems so different. The campus changed, masks covered the faces of my friends, and all of my friends who were upperclassmen were gone. I never even got to say goodbye to them…

Now, as I enter my last couple of months in high school, I still don’t feel like a senior. I feel as though I still have so much more to learn, experience and overall just enjoy before I assume my role as an adult. 

I’ve gotten college acceptances, and it hits me that as my end at Venice High School comes closer and closer, I feel unprepared to leave.

I look at the date everyday and realize it’s one less day I have at Venice. The last Friday night football game, the last Homecoming, the last Fall Semester final in December—everything this year has been my last ever as a Gondolier.

 A question still remains, and I obsess over it way too much but, How did I go from a sophomore to a senior in under a minute?