I felt like coloring. So I did. But to refine that statement, I felt like coloring, and doing some self reflection. So I did. 

“When something ends, only then do we begin to feel it all,” a saying I saw once while perusing Pinterest, and it is just how I feel at this moment in time: as my days in highschool come to a close I’ve become exceedingly overwhelmed with emotion and thought regarding my past years. 

I think, like a lot of my peers, I was so consumed by external and internal drives to succeed I lost myself somewhat, somewhere in translation. It’s not that I never didn’t know who I was or am, but the concept of “me” had more to do with the sports I played, clubs I participated in, classes I took, and subjects I was learning, than I had realized. Though topics I’d later incorporate into my college resume and knowingly benefit from, I recognize there is much more I’d like to define myself by. Such as by my ability to recite every lyric to Eminem’s Rap God (even the fast part), and by my recent mastery to the Supalonely Tik Tok dance trend. 

Now that it is my senior year, I am making a conscious effort to just do whatever the heck it is I please: I’ve made a list of movies I’d like to watch and books I’d like to read; I’ve gone into the city more and I’ve gone to the beach; I went to a concert and I’ve binged a season of reality TV. 

Dear Senior year, I feel like a little kid again. Like my little sister writing down five things that bring her joy or three things she did over the break as homework. 

But I decided it might be fun, and so I asked a sample of students (friends of mine) to answer “Now that I am a second semester senior I feel…” Plotted my level of effort, stress, self-reflection and sense of self during high school, made a little pie chart, and lastly did some coloring. 

Enjoy! *The results were absolutely groundbreaking; senioritis has taken its course yet another year.*