I used to believe that growing up would feel obvious. I thought there would be a single moment where everything shifted, and suddenly I would feel like a wiser version of myself—one who spoke her mind freely and finally shed her anxieties.
As I reflect on my past four years at Wakefield, I realize that growing up occurred quietly, in fragments. Freshman year, I shared almost all of my classes with my twin brother, a recipe for disaster through our constant heckling and competitiveness. This was familiar. I had grown up seeing him every day, whether we rode the bus together or sat next to each other in class. There was comfort in this, in always having someone beside me who already knew every version of who I was.
Sophomore year, that sense of familiarity was lost. I started to drive myself to school, had my own classes and began working a part-time job. My life started to feel separate from the routines I had always depended on. Those changes felt small, but looking back, they were some of the first fragments of growing up.
One of my first classes apart from my brother was The Howler. I joined because I loved to write—naive to the many other aspects of journalism at this time. It took time for me to feel like I belonged writing for a newspaper. I was shy and uncomfortable speaking to strangers, often overthinking every interview and doubting whether I was capable of telling stories worth reading. Yet journalism challenged the version of myself that clung so tightly to familiarity.
By junior year, journalism had become a serious passion of mine. I started winning awards for my articles and discovered that the news is a powerful platform for advocacy. The Howler helped send me down my own path, where I grew into a person who no longer needed constant reassurance that I belonged. I took that new outlook with me through the rest of high school—into my job, my friendships and the unfamiliar experiences that I once feared.
Now, as I prepare to attend UNC-Chapel Hill and continue further down my own path, I find myself thinking again about familiarity. My twin brother will be across the country, and for the first time in my life, our routines will no longer overlap. Part of me still longs for the comfort of what is known—for the halls of Wakefield, my friends from middle school and my longtime coworkers. But high school taught me that growing up is not losing familiarity altogether. It is learning that you are capable of creating a sense of belonging on your own, even in unfamiliar places.
As a kid, I developed a passionate love for literature. Most weekends, or after school, you could find me biking to the library down the road where I was bound to return home with a book…or two…or five. I would read just about anything — fantasy, nonfiction, graphic novels, realistic fiction, clean romance, historical fiction — finding solace between the pages as I entered vast new worlds and came alongside their dazzling, yet relatable, characters. At first, books were simply entertainment; who had ever imagined frogs could behave like people, 12-year-old boys could become wizards and poor musician girls could be appointed queen? Later on, however, they served as a comforting escape whilst navigating my parents’ divorce, transitioning to high school and even now, as I prepare for college and adulthood.
This appreciation for words is what sparked my fondness for writing. Inspired by the likes of J.K. Rowling, Jane Austen and Suzanne Collins, I began dreaming up my own universes, so many of them rooted in my experiences. Once I entered high school, however, that sense of wonder fell flat, quenched by the pressure of AP classes, honor roll and after-school activities. It wasn’t until my junior year, when I assumed my role on The Howler staff, that this aspect of myself was renewed. This time, instead of writing about fictional worlds, I was doing something so much bigger: learning more about the happenings of my community and using my voice to advocate for other people. It’s something I still find delightfully compelling.
Even now, as my own chapter is closing, I’m comforted knowing that the journey doesn’t end here. Despite what life throws at me, I can always crack open a book and immerse myself, once again, in the stories I have come to adore. In doing so, I continue laying the groundwork for change, reminding myself of who I’ve become as I turn the next page
I look to the future, and I am blindfolded. Imagining what lies ahead only conjures static, an incomprehensible void existing just outside my fingertips. Looking out, I am anxious.
In this future, I can be anything. I can be a lawyer, a doctor or even a beggar. Everything I could ever want, everyone I am yet to meet, to love and to hate; it all exists in this void. This void holds so much promise, so much hope. Still, I am anxious.
I think it’s human nature to be afraid, or maybe it’s just me. It’s not the first time I’ve been anxious; I have been scared of many things before. When I was five, I was afraid of the dark. It wasn’t so much the dark as it was the things lurking around it: the monsters and other unknown creatures. My mom bought me a nightlight, though, and all the monsters dissipated as the shadows gave way to a dull, pale light. I thought I had slain all the creatures of the dark, but as I look to the future, through the void, they remain. They lurk in the shadows of indecision, plotting to derail my life from its imperfectly planned track.
Like all things, these monsters can be defeated, but I don’t think a cheap nightlight will be enough. As I ponder how I will slay the beasts, a bewildering thought crosses my mind: maybe I shouldn’t. My experiences in high school have taught me that not everyone is who they appear to be. The bullies are sweethearts, the loners are lovable extroverts and the heroes are villains. Maybe these monsters, despite their grotesque gore, are not out to get me. Maybe, just maybe, the monsters are hiding in the dark to protect me from the unknown.
So as I head into the future, this pitch-black void of hope, I will embrace the darkness and light before me. I will befriend the monsters of the dark in all forms they take. Conquering my fears is not as easy as simply getting rid of them. I need to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. When the uncertain times come that I may need them, I can count on my friends, the so-called monsters, to be on my side.
Looking back at my high school experience as I graduate seems bittersweet. I have been in the same place for four years, experiencing the same things, and now I am off to something bigger. I have only been on The Howler for two years, but it was here that I learned what I want to occupy my time with. I want to write, research and report about events around the world, highlighting issues and events that society should know about. Newspaper has been one of my favorite parts of high school, and it has made me realize a lot about myself.
This experience has really taught me to get out of my comfort zone and allowed me to meet people I never would have talked to without this class. When I was younger, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, but after my high school experience, I feel as if I have at least a general idea of what direction I want to head in. I’ve made a lot of friends, met a lot of people and realized my capabilities all because of high school. The future might be challenging, but what’s life without a few challenges?
I’m excited to try new things, meet new people and continue to step out of my comfort zone. I’m going to learn more about subjects that interest me and learn about myself as well. Growing as a person and learning what I need to do in order for that to happen is important, and hopefully, college will open more doors for me. Overall, my high school experience was a good stepping stone into this new start, and I’m looking forward to the journey.
I have always enjoyed writing, whether it was in the form of a play, novel or article. This passion for writing and creating something new inspired me to apply for The Howler during my freshman year. For the past three years, I have written article after article, creating stories for the enjoyment and interest of the public. I did all of this while going through some of the hardest times of my life.
When I joined The Howler, I did not expect to find the friends I have. I entered this class in my sophomore year, quiet and scared to talk to people. I have always been a shy person when it comes to meeting new people. I met Maya Schindler, who became one of my best friends throughout high school. People come and go, but the friendships that stick with you even after graduating never truly leave you no matter how much time has passed.
During the first year I was passionate about finding different angles to inspire the future generation. I was proud to leave a permanent mark in what was supposed to be the “best years” of my life. It felt good to be writing and have a connection with something I was very passionate about.
For many, high school is a period of time that is foundational to who a person becomes when they’re fully-fledged adults. From people who want to forget those four years altogether to those who look back on them with cherished memories, high school is vital for teenagers who are still figuring out the kind of person they want to be and the kind of person they don’t. For me, I think high school did more than just help find my passions and teach me basic skills. These past years have helped me flourish into a person with strong beliefs, values and perspectives that I hope I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
Though all four years of high school were important for me, the most memorable and significant were my junior and senior years. While there are several reasons for this, the main one was joining Wakefield’s newspaper course and writing for The Howler. Up until then, classes for me had been enjoyable but fleeting, and I often forgot students, teachers and even things I learned once the semester was over. Comparatively, the newspaper was so impactful the change was actually jarring. It wasn’t just a class to me, but a community, a group of friends and something I truly enjoyed doing and looked forward to at the end of every day. Because it was a yearlong course, newspaper felt like my one constant throughout the chaos that was being a high school junior. Signing up for the next year was something so obvious it wasn’t even up for debate, and now as I am approaching the end of it, I can confidently say it was one of the best decisions I made in my high school career.
Now, as I am preparing to move onto the next stage of my life — college at William Peace University, majoring in psychology, playing collegiate soccer — I’m positive I wouldn’t have made it this far without the support of my teachers, friends and family. I’ve grown so much over these past four years, and I am so happy with who I am right now that wondering who I’ll become in the future doesn’t seem so scary. I hope that those reading this feel the same as I do, as being certain in who you are can make the weight of everything else in this world just a little lighter.
People talk about firsts often, but hardly enough about lasts. Not many people get the sad delight of realizing something will happen for the last time. This issue has been the hardest for me to write because of its finality. While I am sad my time writing for The Howler is over, I am beyond happy that it ever happened in the first place.
I joined on a whim after a presentation in my interior design class. Although I only started in my junior year, I never believed just how many friends I would make and how many doors it would open up for me. My high school experience has changed for the better.
Looking back, high school was essentially endless projects, homework assignments and due dates. However, I wish I took a little more time to appreciate my hard work along the way. Sometimes, art is not about the product, but more the process of getting there. My late nights working, long coffee shop trips and pointless stressing blocked me from being able to see the magic that school has to offer. It was a place to make friends and be surrounded by peers, every single weekday.
While putting the final touches on the journalistic art that is my newspaper career, I noticed a strange pattern. My favorite articles are the ones I had the most passion for. Bringing passion into your work can change it significantly. Knowing this, I look forward to bringing my passion to my college of choice, Appalachian State University.
I have countless memories, not all good, but all valuable. My best advice would be to listen to your gut, get involved and never compromise your beliefs. What seems like common knowledge can truly be put to the test.
High school has certainly been a wild ride! Through four years of clustered classes, friendships come and gone and now-cherished memories, I’ve definitely grown as a person by a country mile in several aspects. Intellectually, I have learned a great deal about the various subjects I’ve encountered, but also about myself.
Creatively, I’ve expanded my horizons, expressing myself through projects and writing while also working on my own projects outside of school. I worked on An Audition for A Murder, while writing in my free time on the Howler. During sophomore year, I starred in the feature film “The Community Service Club,” which premiered to a full audience at the Rialto Theater. In 2025, I released my first album, “Hammer,” and I’m currently hard at work on my second one, set to release this summer.
Of course, another amazing aspect of my high school experience was the friendships and memories I cultivated along the way. Freshman year was marked by a pertinent social anxiety and fog clouding my ability to connect with others, these struggles shared by many entering high school as well. Meeting my long-time friend group by sophomore year was definitely a godsend, with their friendships building many unforgettable moments, and their company at events like Homecoming and Prom that flipped the script on my high school story.
My high school experience has definitely prepared me not just to face the real world, but to meet challenges with positivity and try my best to achieve what others might not think is possible. This period, especially junior and senior year, has acted as a sort of parting of the clouds, with a piece of me finally being hopeful for what comes next. Even though I definitely don’t have it all together, and some days are worse than others, I think I’ve finally internalized the idea that ‘this too shall pass.’ If this is only the first chapter of my story, then I’d better get some tea, cozy up and get ready for the novel of a lifetime.
The odds of being born exactly who you are, with the same parents, ancestors and genetics, are roughly one in 400 quadrillion. To put that into perspective, you are 1.3 billion times more likely to win the lottery than to have been born who you are. But I believe that genetics and family members do not indicate who you will be. Those closest to you and the experiences you have throughout your life do. As well as what you learn from all aspects of life. Therefore, the probability of being who you are now is probably so low that there is no number to describe it. Somehow, someway, everything I have endured has led me to become who I am today.
As I am heading off to college, I have thought about this statistical miracle. How every moment in my life has shaped me into the person who will be walking across that stage in a few weeks. Throughout my life, I have moved a multitude of times. Each place I lived, each person I encountered, each thing I learned about myself and the world around me has helped me grow into the person I am today.
Now looking back at my high school years, I wish someone had told me that everything was going to be alright. I experienced a lot of setbacks and challenges over the past few years, and sometimes I worried my efforts would not pay off. I wish I knew that those struggles would make me even stronger, and that I am so proud of myself for just being who I am. Truly, I have grown to love and appreciate myself, and appreciate each setback that has made me into one in 400 quadrillion. At the end of the day, I have to remember that everything will turn out to be alright.
As I reflect on my four years of high school, I realize how strange time can feel. In the moment, the days often felt slow–counting days until breaks, waiting for the final bell and thinking graduation was so far away. Now, as senior year comes to an end, those four years feel like they passed faster than I ever expected.
For most of high school, I thought my whole life revolved around grades. Every test score felt important enough to define my future, and every assignment carried the pressure of needing to succeed. Like many students, I spent so much time obsessing over numbers that I forgot to appreciate everything happening in between them.
From freshman to senior year, as my classes became more difficult, there were moments where I was frustrated by low grades and times where I questioned my abilities because of a single assignment. However, those experiences taught me something more important than any grade could. They taught me resilience, patience, and more than anything, that growth matters far more than perfection.
The things I will remember most from high school are not the numbers in a gradebook or the assignments I stressed over at midnight. They are the rushed conversations in the hallway before class, friendships built through shared stress and laughter and the memories created on ordinary days that did not feel important until they were suddenly over.
Of course, working hard matters. High school taught me discipline, responsibility and the value of effort. However, it also taught me that a grade cannot measure kindness, perseverance or the friendships that became so important to me. Looking back, I wish I had spent less time obsessing over being perfect, and more time appreciating how quickly these moments would become memories.
As graduation approaches, I am realizing high school was never just about grades. It was about growing into ourselves, learning from one another, and finding meaning in the moments we once thought were ordinary.
“Where did all the time go?” I tell myself now in the wake of the final weeks of high school. I swore as a freshman I had plenty of time before I had to say goodbye. Goodbye to the normal I’ve built for myself, of seeing my friends walk through the main doors and chatting about everything and nothing at the same time. I find myself asking if I ever did enough.
Those what-if’s that linger every time a large chunk of time passes by or something life-changing happens in an instant. For the longest time, those kinds of questions made me feel stuck in the past, unable to move on from life’s bitter moments and sudden goodbyes. I was unable to live in the moment, always thinking about what could’ve been. But then something changed my senior year, something that made me stop wondering and stressing over things I couldn’t control. I learned that no matter what happened life always kept moving. That people change and so do I. That not everything had to be some big trial or tribulation. That I could just live, knowing that I didn’t have to be good, smart or talented enough for anyone else but myself.
I wish I could tell my younger self that I didn’t need to prove myself to feel like I was enough because I already was, regardless of my grades, social life or anything else. I was stronger than I ever knew before anything else that came afterward.
As I walk past the field of faces I once knew, I’ll look back fondly to the memories and times I spent with the people who made it count, to the people who made me feel safe and sure that I never needed to be anyone but myself.
As someone who loves making proactive decisions, I have slowly learned that there are some things that are out of my control. When I came into high school, I didn’t know what I was doing; I doubt anyone does, but for some reason, I felt a distinct sense of loneliness in my situation. I felt really insecure, really depressed and desperately wanted to find people who would remind me that I mattered. Within my first year, I found a small group of friends, people that I would cling to constantly, beg to hang out with and follow around like a puppy. This was soon ripped away from me, after moving from Newark, New Jersey, to Raleigh, NC, where I started all over again.
If you consulted with me in my sophomore year, moving was probably the most challenging event I’d gone through during high school. I felt like I was being pulled back into a place where I felt like I didn’t have a sense of direction. I had to be okay with hanging out with myself and discovering my interests. I cut my hair, started wearing makeup and did so much exposure therapy that I slowly stopped being afraid of interacting with new people.
My junior year, I was hit with a wave of impending doom and a constant sense of failure. College applications were creeping up on me, and compared to my peers, I hadn’t done enough. I took four AP classes, tried to join every club under the sun and convinced myself that being busy meant I was finally becoming successful. Through the stress and pressure of junior year, I found a way to bond with so many people and form the beautiful friendships I had longed for years before in the midst of shared misery and common interests.
Looking back now, I can see all my experiences mirroring each other every year. I kept waiting for an “instruction manual” to conveniently land in my lap to tell me what to do. I wanted to become a new person, but I didn’t realize that I was already actively growing. Every time I feel panic creeping up about my college life and my future career plan, I just remember that in the slow movement of time, I’m already changing, and who I’ll be next year will be completely different from who I am today.
Theatre has always been a part of my life. Since fourth grade, I have been performing on stage, and it has led me to find some of my best friends.
Throughout my years doing theatre at Wakefield High School, I have made amazing new friends who have stuck with me through good times and bad. My friends helped me through struggles and ensured I was alright.
Along with helping me find friends, theatre has helped me find who I am. Through the different roles that I’ve played and the different shows I have been involved in, theatre has shaped who I am. In 2024, Doug helped me find the light in the world through accepting everyone. In 2025, Amos and Horton guided me to listen to the people who were being drowned out by knowing how it feels, and Nigel helped me to be more empathetic by embracing vulnerability for myself and others.
The shows that I have been in contribute to how I have changed for the better. I learned to love and accept everyone with “Descendants,” to listen to the quiet people with “Chicago,” to love everyone despite their differences with “Seussical,” to love people while I have the time to with “Alice by Heart,” to love my family with “Mamma Mia” and to find who I want to be with “Pete the Cat”.
I love performing on stage with all of my heart, and I hope to continue performing in college. I hope to keep these lessons I have learned with me for the rest of my life, and I hope to keep learning from my roles in the future. I hope to keep these friends I have made for my entire life.
