by Ashley McGee|

It’s hard to believe I’m about to say this. It’s been an entire summer and yet it still feels odd rolling off my tongue, but here goes nothing: I’m a senior. This year I will spend my last moments in the halls of Liberty High School, I will graduate among a class of over 500 and I will begin the next stage of this long and treacherous journey called life.

Words cannot express how excited I am. After twelve years of pain-staking lectures, grueling study sessions and excruciating tests, in a matter of mere months it will all finally pay off. I’ll have the freedom to pursue my dreams, be anything I want to be and carve my own path within this big, confusing world.

But no beginning comes without an ending. And I can’t bring myself to say this one will be happy. Soon, we’ll be saying goodbye to high school; all the teachers and staff who helped shape us into who we are today, all the classmates that we learned alongside and all the friends who were there for us every step of the way. We’ll all be going our separate ways.

For me, I know the next step I want to take, but it comes like a cold splash of reality. It’s only one word, but it‘s the most frightening word I‘ve ever heard: college. The search, the applications, the cost. I keep on wondering if I’m making the right decisions. I feel like I’m being asked to figure out the rest of my life in too little time.

Luckily, between all the changes before us, there’s some things I can count on to remain the same. I’ll still wake up for school at six o’ clock, sit through the same seven hours of classes and know the people that have been there for me before will be there for me now. I find comfort in this routine. It helps me think of senior year as just another year of high school and, believe me, I’m ready.

I can’t wait to work with the 2011-2012 Bell staff as Editor in Chief, to give back to the Liberty community through National Honors Society, to help make the school a more tolerant environment with the Alliance. Most of all though, I’m looking forward to making this a year to remember, even if sometimes that means going outside my comfort zone and breaking the routine.