Today was my last day of high school. I will not have one more day, one more hour or even one more minute of high school classes in my whole life. Usually, when the school year finishes, you've got Summer ahead of you, so you don't look back and you just enjoy your holidays. But now, I've finished classes but I do not have any holidays: I've still got to study for the Leaving Certificate by myself. I'm in a period now where I'm not a high school student any more, but I'm also not a undergraduate. It feels kind of weird, really, not "being" something that you've been for 6 years. Because, when you think about it, what we do is a part of us, it helps to define who you really are. Sure, you're not only a "student" or a "worker", you're much more than that, but it does influence your life: you get used to the atmosphere of the place you go to every day, you meet certain people with whom you've got to share every morning of a whole year (or six, or twelve years!), and eventually this place and these people enter your life and become part of it. Then, suddenly, one day it all ends, and you have to say goodbye to those people. Obviously, you're gonna see them again, it's not a final goodbye, but it's just not the same. You're not going to have the same relationship with someone you share moments and laughs every day than with someone you only see a few times a months, or even less...
I'm not making this up, I'm talking from my own personal experience. For the last three years I've moved school three times: In 10th grade I moved to a new high school, in 11th class I moved to Ireland and in 12th grade I've moved back to the high school I was before, but there were many new people in it that I didn't know. Even if I didn't mean to, I've lost contact with people that I used to be really good friends with, and I've found new ones. These things just happen, and I've had to admit it. Changes involve losing a part of your past, but I don't see it as a bad thing, because meeting other people does make you a more open-minded person: each of us has a different perspective of life (as Ortega said), and the more points of view you get to know, the more you actually get to know life as a whole.
Now, in September everything is going to change again with college. New places, new people... new me? I suppose. I don't think I'm the same person here than the person I was in Ireland. In the green country, I felt way more insecure about myself, because I was away from home (and the weather didn't really help), but the experience taught me to mature, and when I came back to Spain I was a very different person from the 15-year-old boy that went to Ireland in Summer of 2011. Of course, I'm not saying that I've already grown up completely, I've still got a long way to go, but step by step I feel closer to an adult person. And I like that, but, at the same time, I feel like I want to rewind and re-live some moments that I will never get back. Even though I don't quite realize it yet, I've just finished a very important part of my life that, and although I've wanted it to end in many occasions when I was stressed with exams, I have actually enjoyed and I will always remember with fondness.
However, I've still got the graduation party in a couple of weeks, which I'm really looking forward to. That will be the formal ending of this "era". But that night and the rest of the month will fly by so quickly that, before I know it, I'll have finished my Leaving Cert and I'll be finally enjoying my (deserved?) Summer holidays. And then, college... I can't quite believe it. But it seems so far away now, that I'm not really nervous about it. Not yet anyway. But then again, why should I? It is a change for the better, or so I'm told. Only time will tell.
