Roving Teen Reporter: Ending and Beginning

When the caps fly into the air, does it signal an end or a new beginning?

“I kind of saw [high school graduation] as both to be honest,” Eric Lee, a recent high school graduate, said. “It marked the end of an awful period in my life full of people who I probably wouldn’t ever see again, yet it also marked the beginning of adulthood. It was a starting point for locking in on my life and accepting that I am now responsible for how my life turns out, for better or for worse.”

For Sophia Gorba, another high school graduate, the event felt “more of a starting point.”

“I’m really excited for college next year, so I definitely saw graduation as more of a starting point,” Gorba said. “While I was conscious of how high school was ending, it felt like it was time and instead of feeling sad, I looked to the future.”

For many, graduation day — or even college acceptances — is treated almost like an end goal, to a great extent functioning as the purpose of the four years. Now that getting into college is no longer a focus, Gorba obtains a sense of purpose from what she wants to do with her life in the future.

“Now that I’m no longer in high school, I define success as how well I can set myself up for the future,” Gorba said. “Whether that be starting college or a job, I want to make life easier for my future self by taking the first few steps to get there.”

For Lee, graduation has brought forth a different form of pressure.“

In my day-to-day life, I feel less pressure due to not having to go to classes or do homework or participate in extracurriculars or meet the expectations of my peers and teachers,” Lee said. “However, internally, there is even more pressure than ever to work toward a future that I have no more enthusiasm for now than I had while in high school.”

Gorba described the summer between high school and college as “a really weird place to be in.”

“I feel stuck between the end of one era and the beginning of another, and it bothers me that I don’t have something built in to focus on like I had with school,” Gorba said. “Especially with all the big changes coming up, it feels like I’m stuck in place at the top of a roller coaster, just waiting for the future to start happening.”