By Kathleen McAleese
Editor-in-Chief  

I hear a lot about the “real world.” I suppose that term is just adults trying to explain to us kids that someday we won’t be in high school with hands to hold and pantries full of food that we made no contribution towards. We will have jobs to go to, and taxes to pay, and lives to live.

But something that nobody ever told me about this so called “real world” was that I am already in it. No- I don’t work nine to five and I don’t pay taxes either, and there are times when I just need someone to walk me through something (we need a new definition of the real world) but just because I am seventeen doesn’t make the days I have lived, the people I have met, and the experiences I have had only practice.

Of course, I am embarking into a realm of new responsibility, expenses, and life with more serious consequences. Of course, the goal of most of my education these past four years has been to prepare me for life after high school. Of course, I am really just a kid.

This experience, these past four years, has been new and exciting, often scary, but each day I woke up, I feel I truly lived. I have been living. No one is to say that any day of our high school experiences has been anything less than true and honest.

So now it’s coming to a close and I owe it to myself to be honest: I don’t think I remember the quadratic equation. Chemistry was way over my head. I can’t define every word I learned in English. I’m not too sure I can recall every amendment to the Constitution (I’m not sure I ever actually could).

But I do know what high school has been.

To put it simply, it’s been real.