By Natalie Hill

Centerspread Editor

After a summer of relaxing, celebrating our survival of the infamously challenging  junior year and anticipating college applications, I and the rest of the class of 2010, have made it to our senior year.

As I walk through the halls I have become so familiar with, I can’t help but feel slightly superior to the rest of the meandering students, some lost in the pulsing halls of Coppell High School, others finding the rhythm a suitable beat for their everyday life. I recall the sense of loss and insecurity as I attempted to trudge gracefully through the overwhelming campus when I was a freshman.

I entered my final year at CHS with the anticipation of towering over the underclassmen, peering coolly over the senior bridge and having the freshman girls look up to me, literally and figuratively. I instead found myself with a schedule full of art classes with their locations anywhere but close to the bridge, which I so looked forward to crossing. In fact, for the larger part of my days on the CHS campus, I am roomed in the furthest wing of the school, a hall that I only remember from my days as a lowly freshman.

With full knowledge that I’d never completely fit in with the “senior bridge crowd”,  I never managed to get to know them on “friends” terms. I still find myself walking underneath them as I have a flashback from previous years.

I’m not saying that senior year hasn’t been great. It really has been, so far. With late arrival on a majority of my week, I am enrolled in creative-based courses that I feel will prepare myself for my future past the walls of Coppell High School. I’ve gone to my first pep rally as a student, rather than a member of the strutting Lariettes, which I opted to be free from my senior year. I’ve shoved my ways through the crowded first football game to watch my fighting Cowboys unapologetically demolish the South Garland Colonels.

I’ve made new friends and gratefully treasured the ones I’ve known for years. I attended the Freshman Social and danced for three straight hours with kids that I, otherwise, would never have met. It was the most fun I’ve had since sophomore year at Shelby Tamura’s annual Christmas Party.

I know that this will be a year to remember, but with my segregation from the rest of my senior class, I am humbled and oddly not filled with the pride of a senior, I intend to keep the traditions of a Coppell High School senior, as I have already decked out my overalls and painted my parking spot, and I’ll even continue to chant the notorious “SENIORS! SENIORS!” at pep rallies and games, but continue to hold the humility of a freshman in mind.

There are still 278 days left until I graduate from my spirited alma mater. In these days remaining I foresee memories, events, traditions, laughter, tears, embarrassment, joy and pride yet to come. My senior year has been different than I expected it to be leading up to now. The difference is that I will carry my freshman, sophomore and junior self with me as I travel under the bridge; the road more traveled, and with the journey yet to come, I know my days at Coppell High School have shaped me for the better.