I have spent nearly 720 days, 432,000 hours, 25,920,000 minutes at New Trier.

I still remember the night before my first day of high school freshman year. I felt incredibly nervous, but I was also excited to go to high school and to finally be a “cool” high school student.

My mom told me the night before my first day that high school is a new chapter in my life and it is going to be a totally different experience than junior high.

She told me that I was going to change, and that by the end of my senior year I would be a totally different person than the person I was freshman year.

She also said that I would find my own way and have my own niche.

To be totally honest I thought my mom was full of crap.

I already had a plan for my entire high school career and it didn’t involve me changing who I was and finding a new niche. I was going to play basketball all four years, maybe do a spring sport, join Girls Club or maybe Pep Club, have a boyfriend, and be super popular.

Looking back now, I was totally wrong about what my high school experience was going to be like. I quit basketball after sophomore year after realizing how bad I was at it.

I never joined Girls Club or Pep Club because I forgot to turn in both of the applications freshman year and I never filled them out again in the next three years.

I never found a boyfriend, but I’m still playing the field. And I would like think that I’m pretty popular.

What I found out about high school from my four years is that there is so much to do and so many new opportunities that it’s hard not to change and it’s so awesome when you do truly find your niche.

During my freshman year, I met new people who didn’t go to my junior high and they became some of my closet friends. I ended up joining the lacrosse team freshman year and fell in love with the sport. I got to be on the varsity team for three years and met some of the most amazing people that I have ever met.

I joined two clubs sophomore year and I quit them both the next year. I joined the cross country team junior year and I ran again senior year. I began writing for the newspaper junior year and I became an editor my senior year. I also became a senior helper and a KW leader.

I hate to be cheesy, but high school is truly what you make it. Every activity that I tried or did during my high school career was not what I thought I was going to do that night before the first day of freshman year.

But I think that I truly found out where I fit in and I think that I found my high school niche. I figured out that the more involved I got, the more I got out of high school.

Now that I’m graduating, I have a whole new chapter in my life. College is going to be an even more challenging and interesting experience.

I’m nervous to go but I’m also excited to become a cool college kid. I’ll always remember what my mom told me: that I’m always going to be changing. And by the time I’m a senior in college, I’m going to be totally different.