Embrace that thin line between child and adult
Blair-Stahn
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By Chai Blair-Stahn
Special to the Arizona Daily Star
I'm not sure what to make of my last year of high school - the final chapter in this phase of my life.
I know I'll remember my senior year because it's my senior year. But otherwise, would it stand out in my life?
I have to say yes, and this is why: Senior year of high school allows me and many other students to experience two different worlds.
One of these worlds is the one I mainly inhabit. It is small and protected. In it are my house, my school, my car, my family and friends and various places around Tucson. This is the familiar place, the one I've lived in since childhood. Most other students live here, too. Here, I don't have to worry about making ends meet or any other adult problem. Naiveté still predominates, as well as youth and unsophistication, about the other, bigger world. I know of it. But I'm not fully in touch with it - yet.
The world life, or the "big picture," is the other reality of which I speak.
At some point during senior year - whether it's in the middle of rushing to fill out a college application that's due the next day or the evening of graduation - every student gets an intense, awakening feeling; the realization that it's the last year of high school!
For me, that means the approaching end of the small, familiar and naive world where I've spent the past 17 years. I'm left to become part of this other world, the "real world." My safe sphere of existence will be no more.
At those rare moments, I actually feel what it will be like to be an adult, to be independent, an individual, the parent of your own life. Especially for those who plan on going away for college, you can feel it sometimes. It's a scary feeling.
But I'm only a senior. I'm not there yet! When I get overwhelmed, I return to the other world and rest for a while on my familiar, comfortable bed.
Your senior year is a special time in your life that offers to you the best of both worlds - if you let it. And that's the key: LET IT.
Senior year can let you play on the thin line between childhood and adulthood. You're still young and naive. You can still have fun being a high school student. But you're also wise enough to be able to recognize and appreciate those times as you have them. You can look back at your life so far and remember all the fun childhood memories and gracefully accept that it will soon be over. It helps you prepare for the world as well as let you savor the last fun moments of being a "kid."
At the same time, you can see the future with youthful eyes in an optimistic light, but also with insight of adulthood to be grounded in reality and start off on the right foot. And this gift of being a senior is why I will never forget my year.
Chai Blair-Stahn is a senior at Canyon del Oro High School.
