By Lauren Burdick
<[email protected]>

On Thursday, Dec. 2, I attended Holiday Spectacular, during which I saw the 10 choirs at this school surround the audience with talent and holiday cheer. The friends I went with smiled and laughed during the show, eagerly anticipating what Christmas carol or holiday anthem would be performed next. In fact, upon leaving the auditorium, I said to my friends, “That was really fun.”

This sentence, no matter how simple it may be, held a lot of weight behind it.

I, like most students here, dread my alarm clock in the morning. I trudge from one class to another, counting down the minutes until that lovely bell at 3:05 p.m., whereupon I am thrust out into the real world of friends and “fun.” Upon closer inspection, however, my complaints are seemingly contradictory. Although the student body may go to school each day only begrudgingly, school is frequently where we choose to spend our free time, just as I did on Dec. 2.

Whether it is for a dance, sporting event, play or activity, I return at least once a weekend. During football season, many rarely leave, preferring the comfort of the stadium’s parking lot to the comfort of home. This sense of school pride should be embraced by all, rather than the current “get me out of here as soon as possible” mentality of most students. Those who attended both the Homecoming football game and the dance spent over 12 hours at school between Sept. 23 and Sept. 24 this year.

Kids participating in Dance Marathon next semester will give up six hours of their Saturday night to come back to school, the place that we incessantly moan about. I am just as guilty of griping as others; most Blue Days seem like the longest seven hours and 15 minutes of my life and Fridays can never come soon enough. On the contrary, once that Friday bell rings, it is rarely the last time I set foot in the school door until Monday. It is only logical that students here welcome the countless opportunities that our administration, teachers and P.T.O. make available to us throughout the year.

Next year, as I enter college, everything will be different. With the absence of bells indicating when school life ends and “regular life” resumes, school will be virtually inescapable. I will live and breathe my school. My years in high school have been great preparation for those days, as school is as omnipresent in my life now as it will be in a year.

In college, everything will be focused around the school, from sporting events to charity programs and housing, my school will be unavoidable. These opportunities in college, however, are easily accepted by the student body. The same should be done here. Without spending our time in classes that we deem dull and unnecessary, we would be unable to cheer on our Greyhounds every Friday night or go see a musical put on in our auditorium that rivals shows on Broadway. We cannot have it only one way. It would behoove all of us to walk into school each morning with a smile on our faces, knowing that without the time spent in the classroom, our lives would be much less exciting and fulfilling.

This isn’t to say students need to be 100 percent enthusiastic about every math class, because doing so would be nearly impossible. However, we must learn to accept all aspects of our school, not only the events we enjoy participating in on the weekends. Throughout my three and a half years as a Greyhound, I have been privy to great experiences, both inside and outside of the classroom, all under the realm of “school activities.” As my senior year draws to a close, I look back on my time here and see that I have enjoyed all parts of my school. For those with time left to benefit from the countless opportunities at this school, put a smile on and walk through the halls knowing that your school does much more than teach.