Second semester senior year—a time that has been unfairly marred as the death of all motivation among seniors. All right, maybe there is some justice to the description, but there is also much much more to it than just a pronounced loss of work ethic.

Illustration by Alex Bailey

Around this time, seniors start to recognize that this is it—this chapter in our lives is closing, and the next chapter eagerly awaits. When this seemingly obvious realization is reached, a marked change can be found in many seniors’ social interactions. The same sort of change can be found in many juniors’ behaviors as well, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale.

We begin to view every moment as an opportunity—an opportunity to laugh, an opportunity to comfort, an opportunity to make a memory. We start striking up conversations with people we normally wouldn’t. There is a palpable feeling of collective joy and excitement. Too often are the halls of Redwood High School a very lonely place stained by gossip, drama, and general cold-heartedness which all serve only to isolate us further from our peers. 

We would like to pose a question to the rest of the school: why wait until you are almost out of time to really start coming together? As seniors, the finality of graduating from high school confronts us with the sobering thought that everything we are doing will be a “last time” and as such, many of us are making a concerted effort to treat all of our peers with kindness and respect, not just our close friends. But unfortunately, it took many of us three and a half years too long to really come into our own and realize that all the petty arguments, the gossip, the heartbreak, the badmouthing, all of it was one giant waste of time—it’s uselessness surpassed only by it’s fleetingness.  So why did we wait?

We all need to stop and take a little more time to reflect on how our actions, our conversations, and even the looks we give others can have a great effect on other people’s lives. Going through high school, we’re all a little lost. But instead of allowing this to separate ourselves from one another, why not recognize that we are all going through our own difficult situations? And we can all appreciate how much it means to us when a fellow student carries out a random act of kindness that lets us know we are not in this alone.

Redwood’s biggest flaw is the cattiness that is omnipresent, a flaw that is pretty easy to get caught up in. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t another way.

Consider this—you’re walking through the empty hallways during second period on your way to the bathroom. You round the corner. You spot someone walking the opposite way approaching from the other end of the hall. “Here we go again,” you think to yourself.

You consider your options: take out your cell phone and start texting, pretend to have a sudden fascination with the flyers on the wall, look through the windows of the classrooms you’re passing by, or simply stare at the ground. Stop. Take a deep breath. Look straight ahead. Make eye contact. And smile.