Pressure of Being a Senior

The new faces of CAT

Photo by Jeanille Cogtas

         A week before graduation during 6th grade, a 4th year high school student (now known as a Grade 10 student, if you somehow didn’t hear the news) asked what I was most excited for in high school. I said that I dreaded Math. Feared it with every fibre of my being. I told him how numbers already looked frightening on their own; how much more then when they get mixed with the alphabet?

I was wrong, though. The ‘a + b’s and the ‘(x – y)²’s are intimidating, but we get along nonetheless. I didn’t even answer his question correctly, poor guy.

After four years of laughter, tears, stress, low points, and triumphs, I realized what I truly feared: becoming a Senior. The role models.The ultimate ates and kuyas. The most responsible students in the entire universe because they’ve been through this and that, and they should already know everything that has to be done—well, I may have gone overboard there, but close enough I guess.

To be quite frank, just because we are the eldest (considering the Senior High as a different story), does not mean we know everything right away. Just four months ago, we were Juniors. That span of time is too short for us to immediately reach, even just slightly tap, the expectations put up for Seniors. We have the SSG, the CAT, the interlevel competitions, plus our studies, our projects, our reports and presentations, and we have everyone else paying such close attention.

We have lapses because we’re not perfect. We’re not perfect because we are humans. We apologize for the mistakes we made, and we apologize in advance for the mistakes we will make. Being a Senior makes us carry a whole lot on our shoulders, but who says we’re going to crush under the weight?

We probably might stumble a little, that’s a bit embarrassing. You know what they say, though: we’re all in this together!

(You just sang that in your head, didn’t you? Don’t worry, I did too.)

- JenikaGi-An C. Nero