By Mary Whitfill
Features Editor

This year at CHS has brought several changes, notably new administrators, adjustments to dress code, and the usual wave of incoming freshman. I am beginning to not recognize the place that has been my home away from home for the last four years.

The flowers outside the library seem less colorful, the freshmen seem more clueless and the workload seems less and less (and less) important to me than in previous years.

But as I sit down and think about it, I realize that maybe this feeling doesn’t come from the new vending machines or the old carpet; maybe this feeling is something that has developed within me. Everyone constantly complains about ‘senioritis,’ but I have found myself afflicted with something slightly different than the usual need to just get away.

Rather than developing an overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia and an impatient desire to be done with the high school curriculum, the opposite idea has struck me – the world is at my fingertips. This is the time when I get to explore my interests, discover new ones and finally learn what I want to learn.

I’m that person who could go to school forever and be perfectly happy. I want to go to law school, but I don’t actually want to be a lawyer. I think medical school would be endlessly fascinating, but the thought of practicing medicine makes me sick to my stomach. I am happy to spend the rest of my life learning, but I want to be able to call the shots on what I learn.

While the CHS course guide lacks a class named ‘Why Rick Perry is a Complete Idiot,’ I have begun to realize that what my school has to offer doesn’t have to be the line in the sand on what I actually learn. We live in an instantaneous era, and for that reason, I have been able to pull myself out of the usual senior year rut.

Like most (all) high school students, I find 11 p.m. rolling around without a thought given to my homework, but for reasons that are foreign to some of my classmates. Rather than spending hours taking photos of myself on a webcam or posting tons of notes on Facebook about how bored I am, I have started to learn about things I actually want to know about. I have read over half of the Federalist Papers, I’ve trolled through the first seven chapters of Constitutional Law for a Changing America and, through all of it, I find myself actually thrilled to be learning.

So as I sit in C231 and B112 memorizing patterns, rhetorical devices and irrelevant formulas, I find myself reaching further and further out and getting further and further away from home.  This is my time to do with what I please and I plan to change the world someday – but maybe not with what I learned in high school.