I never thought I would be mentioning anything about my last few days of M.S. from June 2009 & my last few days of H.S. last June on this blog, but here goes nothing (& I hope those of you whom this applies to don't mind me making this update!): I'm not sure about other school districts, but in my now-former (as hard as that still is for me to believe!) school district, people have usually made a big deal of the end of each school year, scheduling the vast majority of its awards ceremonies in May & June, & in both my 8th & 12th grade years (2009 & this year, respectively), those ceremonies took up most of my May & June days! In '09, the main ceremony I was involved in was the N.J.H.S. (which is basically the middle school version of that particular organization), & shortly after that, the entire class got a week all to itself, & throughout that week, as I went through each day, I figured that it would be somewhat odd not being there anymore, but @ least I would still be in the same district with many of the same people, plus some new people! Fast forward 4 years to Memorial Day weekend of this year, though, & I got those same feelings, increased many times..... Before I get to all the fun stuff from last June, however, I might as well mention that I was part of 3 more ceremonies that month! The 1st of those was actually in late May, & it was a school-sponsored ceremony in which various district employees past & present gave away various awards, & despite their insistence that some people would be receiving multiple awards, from what I remember, almost nobody actually received more than 1 or 2 awards! For everybody else, the awards came immediately, but I received mine a few days later @ a private luncheon (sssshhhhhhhhh..... did I mention that ceremony was private?)! A few days after that gathering, there was another award headed my way, but this particular award was overtaken by (1) some controversies that had the entire district on edge; so much so, in fact, that the award wasn't mentioned anywhere locally until mid-August & (2) the sudden death of James Gandolfini, which I 1st learned about shortly after I returned home from the BOE building! Once those ceremonies (both private & public) & the slight bit of attention (did I mention I hate any sort of public attention?) that came with them were out of the way, I was finally able to focus on the "fun stuff" that comes with being part of each year's graduating class, such as prom..... Now that I mentioned that, I might as well mention that while that started off somewhat ugly, as rain started pouring just minutes after I arrived there, & naturally, everybody who was on line waiting to enter the building when it started pouring rain was allowed to wait right inside the emtrance instead of just outside the entrance, since the line extended almost all the way down this walkway @ our venue (www.skylandsatrandolph.com/, for you weirdos outside N.J. who are actually willing to eavesdrop on my posts), & once everybody got inside, it was basically just people searching for their other people, & once 30 minutes or so passed, everybody (myself included) made their way upstairs to this huge ballroom-type location that looked like it had been converted from something else (as did most of the building, @ least in my opinion..... out of everybody who was there that evening, I must have been the only person to (publicly) complain about the building's general "outdatedness" (if that's even a word), since I called the building "something straight out of the 1990s", or something like that, on FB the following morning!)..... Considering there were over 800 people in that class with me (although only about 750 of us made it to the actual graduation ceremony, but more on that later!), the place emptied out @ a somewhat fast pace for a Friday night in mid-June, but I guess that must have been only because I actually stayed the entire 4+ hours to witness the building slowly emptying out! Once that weekend came & went, the only real thing I was looking forward to was our H.S. graduation week, which, aside from the somewhat early distribution of yearbooks, played out incredibly similarly to the same week 4 years earlier! This time around, considering I already got many of my M.S. people in that (now non-existent) yearbook, I focused mostly on the students & teachers I had met during my 4 years in H.S. (especially my last 3 years of H.S.), although I made aboslutely certain to get a few of the people I had missed 4 years earlier in this time around, since I knew that there would most likely be no more 2nd chances this time around! (FULL DISCLOSURE: For the most part, @ least for me, it was students & non-teaching staff members in the front, & teachers in the back, although there were some exceptions to that rule!) For the rest of that week, once I got quite a few people into my H.S. yearbook (which I vow to never lose after what happened to most of my M.S. stuff!), I spent the vast majority of my time wondering where those people would be starting their college years, but I managed to put all those somewhat worrisome thoughts of mine behind on the last Friday of June, when the long-awaited graduation ceremony finally happened, & for a few short hours that day, all of the uncertainty was replaced by people showing all kinds of emotions (as 1 would most likely expect from 1 of those ceremonies), as well as getting to see everybody else in their graduating class together for the final time (since, as much as I hate to tell you people this, a lot can happen in the span of 5 or 10 years!)..... Once that was done, & everybody headed back home, there were a few hours between the ceremony & a special post-graduation gathering @ another local venue (www.funplexeasthanover.com/), & just as the Skylands people had done for us 2 weeks earlier, those people closed off the entire building for us! As the "nighttime" hours became the "overnight" hours, I started getting more & more emotional on the inside about not seeing many of those people again after that weekend..... I managed to keep all those emotions inside me, however, until the bus ride back to our H.S. parking lot, which had gone from being a completely shut down party zone the previous evening to practically a funeral home/mausoleum/etc. in the span of just 9 hours! Once my bus, which was the last bus out of almost 10 of them to return, arrived back in the parking lot, I stood amongst a bunch of other people who were already all emotional about moving on from H.S. life in general, & once I got away from all of them, I proceeded to do the exact same thing, as I suddenly let all the emotions I had tried to keep inside me throughout the entire previous week loose in a locked room that I had all to myself, & I ended up doing the exact same thing I had done the final Saturday morning of June quite a few more times throughout July & August (mostly July), & even on my 1st night in college, when all the frustration with my current campus had reached its (previous) breaking point, but other than those occasions, I managed to keep people from witnessing any sort of emotional breakdowns on my part..... It wasn't just those types of occasions, however, in which I managed to keep any emotions I might have been feeling inside me until I was away from everybody else, but considering the once-in-a-lifetime nature of those occasions, I consider it even more of an accomplishment than usual on those occasions!
(P.S.: I would mention that I'm planning on returning to those aforementioned events & venues next June, but there are a few potential time constraints that might get in the way of me (sort of) re-living my senior year, such as (1) this trip to western Europe (Spain & France, to be exact) that my family has been planning for a bunch of years now, & (2) I put off my planned Temple U. Japan summer trip for another year just to be able to deal with the whole transition process from this freshman year to my sophomore year, since I'm not willing to have to have made the transition from H.S. to college only to have to transition from U.S. to Japanese culture & life temporarily about a year later! All that being said, however, if my H.S. is gracious enough (& actually willing) to invite me (or anybody else!) back next June, then I'll be 1 of the 1st people making my way back to all of those venues for the 2nd time in a year next June!)
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