Carly Menker
Editor in Chief '17
“Yeah, I’m a senior now.” This phrase is heard more and more often these days by my ears, and it’s impossible to know where the time went. One cloudy day, three years ago in 2013, the class of 2017 stumbled through the doors of a grandiose building known as John L. Miller Great Neck North High School. We rushed through the gigantic halls all disheveled, struggling to find rooms as if the doors were hidden from our sight. We prayed we’d arrive on time, if not, a crisp blindingly white detention slip was given as a consolation prize.
In 2014, we were a little less lost, but still late. We began to work harder, realizing the value of our grades. We knew our hell year was coming up, and we needed to get our crap together before we lost it completely. Joining clubs, sports, theater, music, and research were easy ways to get involved and things we wished we began the previous year.
In 2015, we were cast into a frenzy of the daunting Junior year, where everything is hard, and all tasks are scary. With a sprinkle of time management and a dash of great thinking, it is easy to survive. The right mindset propels you through your darkest moments. Those times where you feel life is ending, or it isn't worth it suddenly become transparent when you realize you have more potential that you initially thought, you just didn't try as much as you should have. If you play it right, you'll end up with the highest grades you've ever achieved.
And that brings us to now, September 2016. Where the present freshmen are living through the seniors 2013, the sophomores through our 2014, and the juniors through our 2015. Seniors, this is our 2016, where are current states of mind are suspended in a perpetual state of uncertainty.
Our futures are presently unknown; we have no idea where we'll be the next four years of our lives. Each day we live is a repetition of college applications, homework, extracurricular activities, more applications and more homework. Because it's the grades that count the most. The activities you’ve done, the accomplishments you’ve achieved. The applications that have to be submitted as soon as humanly possible, otherwise you will be rejected. The conversations with the teacher who tries their best to understand your fleeting plea for good first quarter grades, because if you get a C amongst a sea of As, it will raise concern and you will be tossed away like your applications.
Our lives have become the unattainable ideal that we can do it all, be it all, create it all to the best of our ability at all times possible. We must be perfect, no missteps along the way because that would jeopardize our chances. Our chances at a good future, a future that all our only wish is for it merely to be certain and to work out the way we want it to.
Preoccupied with everything, for us it's easy to lose sight of the important things in our lives during this precarious time. The most important thing that is being given a lack of attention to is yourself. Your sleep patterns are all messed up, you cry or lash out randomly at anyone because you don't know what to do because life is stressful. Everything is out of whack, and all you want is for it to be better again. But that'd be too easy.
You get your test back, which results in you locking yourself in the cold bathroom stall on the second floor while you try to muffle your sniffles and hold back your tears. You drag yourself to your tennis practice where you feel worthless because your spot has been undermined in the starting lineup because there are eighth-grade middle schoolers on the high-school team that are seemingly better than you. You hopelessly attempt to stick up for yourself, but it's not worth it: your plea falls on deaf ears. You stick it out anyway, because you made a commitment and are loyal. But your mind keeps wandering back to the fact that there are a million other things to be doing right now. Everyone expects you to be perfect.
We try and try and keep trying, struggling to stay afloat in a sea striving to drown us. This flawed system, evaluating us based on numbers and 650 words, tries to place us based on these minuscule aspects of our lives. We wait in agony to hear back, and some of us will be elated while others will feel as if they've fallen down a rabbit hole into a place without a purpose.
We must try to stay swimming, to somehow find a balance to the craziness that has become our lives. Freshmen, sophomores, and juniors work hard this year even if it may seem it doesn't matter. If you never ask or go after what you want, you will never have an answer nor will you ever have what you want. Manage your time and revel in the good things that happen to you.
To my fellow seniors, we can do this. We just need to believe in ourselves and know that, no matter how terrible life may seem now, soon the uncertainty will be gone. Sometimes, we find ourselves in the middle of nowhere without direction, and it's there in the middle of nowhere where we truly find our truest selves.
Editor in Chief '17
“Yeah, I’m a senior now.” This phrase is heard more and more often these days by my ears, and it’s impossible to know where the time went. One cloudy day, three years ago in 2013, the class of 2017 stumbled through the doors of a grandiose building known as John L. Miller Great Neck North High School. We rushed through the gigantic halls all disheveled, struggling to find rooms as if the doors were hidden from our sight. We prayed we’d arrive on time, if not, a crisp blindingly white detention slip was given as a consolation prize.
In 2014, we were a little less lost, but still late. We began to work harder, realizing the value of our grades. We knew our hell year was coming up, and we needed to get our crap together before we lost it completely. Joining clubs, sports, theater, music, and research were easy ways to get involved and things we wished we began the previous year.
In 2015, we were cast into a frenzy of the daunting Junior year, where everything is hard, and all tasks are scary. With a sprinkle of time management and a dash of great thinking, it is easy to survive. The right mindset propels you through your darkest moments. Those times where you feel life is ending, or it isn't worth it suddenly become transparent when you realize you have more potential that you initially thought, you just didn't try as much as you should have. If you play it right, you'll end up with the highest grades you've ever achieved.
And that brings us to now, September 2016. Where the present freshmen are living through the seniors 2013, the sophomores through our 2014, and the juniors through our 2015. Seniors, this is our 2016, where are current states of mind are suspended in a perpetual state of uncertainty.
Our futures are presently unknown; we have no idea where we'll be the next four years of our lives. Each day we live is a repetition of college applications, homework, extracurricular activities, more applications and more homework. Because it's the grades that count the most. The activities you’ve done, the accomplishments you’ve achieved. The applications that have to be submitted as soon as humanly possible, otherwise you will be rejected. The conversations with the teacher who tries their best to understand your fleeting plea for good first quarter grades, because if you get a C amongst a sea of As, it will raise concern and you will be tossed away like your applications.
Our lives have become the unattainable ideal that we can do it all, be it all, create it all to the best of our ability at all times possible. We must be perfect, no missteps along the way because that would jeopardize our chances. Our chances at a good future, a future that all our only wish is for it merely to be certain and to work out the way we want it to.
Preoccupied with everything, for us it's easy to lose sight of the important things in our lives during this precarious time. The most important thing that is being given a lack of attention to is yourself. Your sleep patterns are all messed up, you cry or lash out randomly at anyone because you don't know what to do because life is stressful. Everything is out of whack, and all you want is for it to be better again. But that'd be too easy.
You get your test back, which results in you locking yourself in the cold bathroom stall on the second floor while you try to muffle your sniffles and hold back your tears. You drag yourself to your tennis practice where you feel worthless because your spot has been undermined in the starting lineup because there are eighth-grade middle schoolers on the high-school team that are seemingly better than you. You hopelessly attempt to stick up for yourself, but it's not worth it: your plea falls on deaf ears. You stick it out anyway, because you made a commitment and are loyal. But your mind keeps wandering back to the fact that there are a million other things to be doing right now. Everyone expects you to be perfect.
We try and try and keep trying, struggling to stay afloat in a sea striving to drown us. This flawed system, evaluating us based on numbers and 650 words, tries to place us based on these minuscule aspects of our lives. We wait in agony to hear back, and some of us will be elated while others will feel as if they've fallen down a rabbit hole into a place without a purpose.
We must try to stay swimming, to somehow find a balance to the craziness that has become our lives. Freshmen, sophomores, and juniors work hard this year even if it may seem it doesn't matter. If you never ask or go after what you want, you will never have an answer nor will you ever have what you want. Manage your time and revel in the good things that happen to you.
To my fellow seniors, we can do this. We just need to believe in ourselves and know that, no matter how terrible life may seem now, soon the uncertainty will be gone. Sometimes, we find ourselves in the middle of nowhere without direction, and it's there in the middle of nowhere where we truly find our truest selves.