Dear Graduation,

I’ll be completely honest, over the course of this my senior year, I never really paid you much attention. However, in the past few weeks, many things have occurred which have forced me to gaze upon your face, which I have come to notice is comprised of equal parts terrifying and exciting features.

When I started at Lambert High School almost four years ago in the fall of 2013,  I really did not know what to expect. I had done pretty well in all of my middle school classes and made a fair amount of friends, but it was still going to be quite a challenge adjusting to a new school.

Over the course of my freshman year, I would be beaten and chewed up in more ways than I ever could have imagined. On the first day of school I was late to nearly every one of my classes because I was overconfident in my ability to find all the rooms without the aid of a campus map. In the winter, I was among the first baseball players cut from making that year’s roster. Later I would be given not one, but two black eyes and a broken nose in a freak accident which left me to take my lone AP exam with a concussion.

Sophomore year was no better as I had a grand total of 4 out of 7 teachers who are no longer with Lambert (for reasons we will not guess here at the Post), I could count the number of people I actually knew in my classes on just my two hands with fingers to spare, I missed two weeks of school with a combination of the flu and strep throat, and I was cut first from the baseball team once again.

Junior year and senior year were both marked by the trials and tribulations of academic hardships including the ACT, SAT, and attempting to get my grade point average up to a level high enough so that neither myself or my family will be crippled under the weight of student loan debt as I go off to college.

However, as we move closer and closer to the day when my fellow seniors and I put on our caps and gowns to walk out of Lambert once and for all, I have come to realize that I wouldn’t trade my four years as a Longhorn for anything in the world. Because I came to school in such a place, I have been surrounded by and made new friends who I hope to maintain relationships with for as long as humanly possible. I was put into classes taught by wonderful people who always saw the best in me and pushed me to work towards living up to all of the potential that they knew I had.

Even all of the negative things that happened to me here have turned into positives. Because I was cut from baseball, I spent less time stressing about sports and discovered once again how much I loved other activities like reading, running, and volunteering. Because I did not have tremendous teachers my sophomore year, I was able to teach myself for the first time how to succeed in classes where the cards aren’t necessarily stacked in your favor. Because of the academic hell I went through in my last two years, I was accepted into a college that never in 1,000,000 years did I think I could attend. After having very few friends sophomore year, I have become close with some of the best people I may ever know and for the last two years, I was able to take girls who were far out of my league to prom.

So Graduation, as your arrival becomes more and more imminent, just know that I don’t fear you because the last four years, which have led me to this point, have left me with scars both physical and mental, but also left me with indescribable joy and life lessons that will allow me to be a good citizen and a successful person for as long as I live.

See you May 31st.

Warmest Regards,

Colin Masterson