Everyone is always waiting for the weekend or for summer, but what are we really waiting for?

My whole high school career I have gone to school every day and counted down the minutes till lunch. I would wait for this brief period of time where I was unbothered, although it did not last me long. Each week I would wait for the weekend and when the weekend was not enough, I would wait for summer.

I am in a constant state of waiting. As senior year is coming to an end I can’t help but wait for graduation the same way I always wait for the end of the year, but it is different this time. Every year prior, summer always came with the certainty of knowing I would return. It is a constant cycle that has repeated for 12 years. School, summer, repeat.

This time is different though. I wait for summer, but what comes next? What am I really waiting for? I wish for summer, for a break, but what will I do when it is over? In my head I will return to PHS, pick up my new schedule and start my classes with the same people who I have been in class with for the last 12 years.

This isn’t true though. As I wait for summer, I also wait for the unknown. As I yearn for a break, I unwillingly put my high school years behind me. I wish for a time to be carefree and have fun but is that what adulthood will be like?

Wishing for senior year to end has faced me with the bittersweet reality that what I really have been waiting on all this time is the routine and familiarity that have come with being in school, specifically at PHS. I have been in the same town with the same people for 18 years. As much as I have waited in those years, I always return to the same place every August. In a new classroom at 8 in the morning, surrounded by familiar faces.

As I have gone through senior year, I have had to come to the sad reality that the things I wait for every year will no longer happen. No more cheering in the student section at football games, no more walking in every morning to 311C to start editing the newspaper stories, no more walking to classes with my friends, no more lunches where we laugh our heads off, no more walking into school every morning with my brother.

As everything starts to come to an end, I wonder what I have been really waiting for all of this time. When everything is done and over and summer has come, what will be next for me? I will go to college, but my routine will never be the same again. I will never come back to these experiences that I just brushed over like they were nothing.

Even though I will inevitably continue to wait for the next best thing for my whole life, I will always ask myself what I am really waiting for and whether I really want the current moment to be over. As I finish off senior year and enter adulthood I sit with the knowledge that sometimes I just have to live in the moment because no matter how much you wait, things both change and stay the same. You do so much waiting that when the waiting is up you look back and wonder why you ever wanted those experiences to end.