Saying goodbye to New Albany High School is hard. Leaving anything that you’ve revolved your life around for four years is going to be hard. Everyone who graduates will think back to their memories of high school, whether good or bad. While I do have some bad memories, I think the majority of my memories will be pleasant. The main thing I think I’ll remember is all the different experiences I’ve had. I can’t lump myself into any classification like “jocks” or “nerds” or anything like that. I have had so many unique groups of friends and known a range of people.
Freshman year was really a learning experience. I had my first girlfriend, was a part of three different baseball teams and got to know a bunch of people. I still kept my friends from Scribner but meeting people from other schools was really interesting. Participating in the PE games and being on the baseball team helped fuel my competitiveness and going to the basketball and football games helped me gain new friends and get my fill of sports. From the beginning of freshman year compared to the end I had a completely different perspective on high school and life. With my brother being a senior then, I got to get a look ahead on what it would be like for me in a couple of years.
Sophomore year I still played baseball but as I thought more and more about I realized there were other things that I was better at and enjoyed doing more. I was close with the team and still enjoyed it, but it wasn’t what it used to be. I hung out with different groups of people and bounced around friend groups until I became best friends with a group who we all had known since we were little.
Junior and senior year I feel like I really started to adopt the “don’t care” attitude. People were still worried about what other people think about them and were having pointless drama. I started caring about myself and those who cared about me, I didn’t need any validation from anyone else. These were the years I felt like I matured the most. I stopped baseball and tried to focus on school. I was still friends with a lot of people and valued that but some groups I wouldn’t really hang out with anymore. My best friend from sophomore year and I hardly talked to anymore. My group of best friends from the past year and a half stopped hanging out and we all went out different ways. I tried to focus on what would make me happy. I worked more, found my interest of shoes.
Another thing I tried to do is avoid pointless drama. I like to think that people enjoy being around me, and if they don’t that’s their problem. I never went out of my way to cause trouble for someone. Hopefully in the years after college when reunions happen I’ll be able to talk to everybody I knew with no problem. If there was one thing I think I did right, it would be making a lot of different friends and not immersing myself in drama. Overall, my memories of New Albany are fun to think about and I know I’ll miss it.