Senioritis

Felix Brem, Taby Finamore, Grant Li, & Selah Sanchez

Felix: It’s a strange feeling, coming home to a room that in only a few months won’t belong to you anymore. The bulletin board of childhood photos and mementos, the posters on the wall and the messages scribbled on furniture in pen will no longer mean ‘home.’ Instead, half of your belongings will be crammed into a yellow room the size of a closet, unwashed laundry filling its corners and the smell of coffee biting harshly in the air. Familiar routines, friends, and boba shops will be replaced as midterms and work-study jobs occupy your time instead. It’s exciting, but it’s terrifying, to roll the dice and hope that the debt will be worth it.

As colleges begin to release decisions, this is the reality for many seniors--contemplating how to let go of your past and prepare for the future. Many of us may struggle to prioritize which colleges will give us the most value for the least amount of money. Some of us (cough cough) may have regrets after changing our minds too late about which majors or careers we want to pursue. Some of us may find our options limited as anti-LGBTQ bills across the nation eliminate colleges in certain states from the list entirely.

Taby: I will miss the subtleties of OCSA. I will reminisce on the times when I forgot my lunch, and Juan, the taco truck owner, would deliver my food to the red gates of the DMS. Rainy days spent inside the VAC gallery, admiring the artwork created by my peers, will make me nostalgic. I will miss peering over the red railing of the fire escape we use to get to class and seeing every variety of Doc Martens. The random shrines to Manny and other internet memes that spontaneously appear on freshly painted walls each year are ingrained in my mind. I will both cringe and cherish the surges of pride that every wave of seventh grade has for attending such a unique school. Instagram accounts that range from OCSA confessions to OCSA calves to people caught eating bananas in the Tower will continue to haunt me. Above all, I will miss the sense of community that exists beyond conversation, embodied in teenagers clothed in local band tees and chunky jewelry. I am unsure of where I will find myself next year, but I know I have found pieces of who I am on this campus.

Grant: What’s there to say about senioritis that somebody else already hasn’t said a million times before? The bittersweet memories, the lost childhood, the quirky things you’ll miss at OCSA—it’s all well-trodden territory. I’m not good at reminiscing. So instead, I’d like to share a true story about burnout from my family:

I know a family friend from my hometown in Michigan. Admissions officers drooled over this guy—perfect GPA, student body representative, founder of three clubs. Sure enough, he ended up enrolling at UMich with a full ride. In his freshman year, he won a national award for business innovation. As a sophomore, he was recruited as an intern at Facebook. Junior year, he was having lunch with the executives. Then year four came—and everything came crashing down. He didn’t go to classes for an entire semester. He quit the internship and got arrested a couple of times. Something about being the model student for all his life caught up to him, and he let his whole life fall through his fingers.

After graduating in 2018 with a 2.9 GPA, he moved to China and started teaching English at a small elementary school. He posts workout videos with his students on Instagram. The last time I talked to him, he told me that he wouldn’t change a thing about his life.

Selah: For me, what made OCSA was the people. To some extent, everyone here is a nerd. Discovering this was a leap from what I had been used to– being made fun of for being a nerd. But there is undeniable talent to be found here, and it’s beautiful. It’s helped me discover parts of myself that may have remained hidden. It was a place that challenged me academically and creatively. There were opportunities, like Journalism, Playfest, OC Ryse, and even the opportunities I didn’t end up taking have all helped me. And, one cannot deny the traditions and trademarks here, from the thump of the 10th Street music, the enigmatic dirt pile, the slug phenomenon last year, and beads strung through shoelaces.

Now here I stand, a short and stout stump of a student about to be thrown into a sea of independence and perpetual financial crisis. It’ll be strange living on a college campus, going to lectures and seeing people dress relatively ‘normal.’ But I don’t think anything will prepare me for the culture shock that is college. OCSA’s energy, the people, the traditions, especially the Halloweens– I’m going to miss all of that. But if I survived a major change in my life such as OCSA, then surely I can stand another!