Four years at Mill Valley high school. A time filled with sports practice, late night study sessions, good classes, bad classes and procrastinating with Netflix. Like many, I learned to drive, then was lucky to get a car. I joined newspaper, where I covered topics ranging from sports championships to car accidents. During the summers, I guarded swimmers old and new, picked up trash from the gutters, and wiped up blood-stained pool decks. Now these four years, four fast-paced, action-packed joyous years, are coming to an end.

In fifty years, I don’t think I will recall any of those memories. Not the physical hardships of sports injuries, nor the materialistic possessions I sought to work towards. I won’t remember my favorite t-shirt, or my friend’s dead aloe plant.

I’ll still recall some things, like the smell of the commons in the mornings and the laughter of friends in the locker banks. I’ll remember the voices of those whose words and appeal influenced and changed me. These are the things I’ll remember, the fun memories shared with friends that I can look back on and laugh, recalling all the silly fun we had. As time goes on, our minds ease the pains of our ‘worst’ mistakes, and we will look back on them all and laugh.

You see, life goes on, we forget the bad and move on, remembering all of the good. As Jonathan Goldsmith once said, “find out what it is in life that you don’t do well and then don’t do that thing”. That’s what high school and life is I guess, learning about what works and what doesn’t.

I guess the final piece of quirky wisdom I can attempt to leave you, the reader, with: all actions and events will bring good memories, one way or another. So stop worrying about why you can’t do something, and start thinking about why you should do it. Life isn’t forever, you know.