By Mattie Stinson, Stentorian Staff Writer
One of the first things my seniors (shout out Bindi Parikh and Janvi Patel) told me was that they couldn’t remember who they were when they first arrived on Junior move-in day. They said they separated their experience in phases based on which application they were working on at the moment, whether that be R-Sci’s, Mentorship, Senior Leadership, or the dreaded college apps.
It has been 24 hours after college apps officially started and less than 24 hours away from RLA move-in and I have been hit with excruciating nostalgia. Prior to my junior move-in, everything was about going to a new place. There were new people, I got to buy new things for my dorm, I was going to have a new roommate and a new room, I got new opportunities, I got to be a new version of myself.
But this year? I am returning to a place knowing that it is my final year, most of which will be spent worrying about college applications and decisions, and it will be without half of the people I knew last year. I am reminded of Sad-Half, staring at the seniors who taught me how to not only survive, but to thrive at the place where we both called home, knowing that they wouldn’t be there to guide me anymore. We change so much throughout even just our first year at NCSSM that the second we get a solid sense of who we are, it is time for us to help the next juniors find their place.
It’s times like this where I wish we had more time, where I wish SSM was a 4 year program. But I think that would defeat the importance of it. Most people know who they are by the end of sophomore year and stay relatively the same for the rest of their high school experience.
NCSSM takes people who think they are sure of who they are and what they can do, and it tests us. It makes us doubt our abilities, be sure of them, doubt them again, and then finally be secure in them. And it does something similar with our identities. I was a different person in semester one than I was in J-Term than I was in semester two than I am now.
Part of the NCSSM experience is growing, whether than be identity wise or academically. We are able to morph in a way that no other high schooler gets to and that’s something that is so nerve wracking yet so beautiful.
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