Graduating Grateful
August 26, 2024
Writer: Rachel Farhoudi
Editor: HY Editors
If you had asked me at fifteen if I had ever experienced a spiritual awakening, I would probably surprise you by blurting out an eager ‘yes!’
Not many fifteen year olds can say that.
It was never part of my plan to end up at Pinewood School. My brother had attended Pinewood before me, so I applied because my parents wanted me to switch to private school. I was accepted. However, I returned the offer with a polite “no, thank you” and started making plans to attend Los Altos High School. I had already started training with the field hockey team and I had every intent of rolling up to that campus come freshman year.
So what happened? Why did I show up on Pinewood’s campus in the fall of 2019? As many may know - because I make it an absurdly large part of my personality - I go to sleepaway camp every summer for a month in middle-of-nowhere Texas.
The summer before my freshman year of highschool, I received a letter from a middle school frenemy: pages and pages of an apology for something that seems so insignificant now it’s almost funny. As I sat there looking at the thick Crayola marker bleeding through the page, I had an epiphany.
In between the striped lettering, something was telling me to let go of the person who was all consumed by something so silly. . There was no way I could handle four more years of the same drama I had become well acquainted with in middle school.
I sent my mom a letter pleading with her to email Pinewood and beg for my spot back. Mercifully, the school accepted and I scrambled to get ready to start at a new school in just two weeks.
Although I initially didn’t want to attend Pinewood, I have so much gratitude for what I learned there both inside and outside the classroom. I am so excited to graduate and start at a new school for the second time. Grappling with the thoughts and feelings of ending a high school career, I compiled a brief list of all the things I’m feeling about graduating after four unexpected years as a Panther.
I am very ready to see more than the same 50 faces in all my classes. I love my classmates, but sometimes a fresh face would be really nice after cycling through the same eight discussion partners in literature class.
I cannot wait to skip a class every now and then without reporting my whereabouts to the school. Don’t worry, teachers: I swear I will go to my classes in college, but I also need to sleep in every now and then.
How on earth do you get it together for freshman year after a semester of debilitating senioritis?
I am ready to hone in on a specific interest of mine. I have appreciated the California Common Core curriculum, but I am ready to prioritize the subjects that excite me and learn more about what I want to do with myself in the future.
Fifth and finally, I am feeling a tinge of sadness at leaving behind the place I have made home for the past four years. I will miss every teacher and class, even the ones I struggled in.
I will miss all the miscellaneous sports teams, clubs, and Pinewood Performing Arts activities I threw myself into it. I will miss spirit days and snack shack lemon loaves. I will miss everyone I’ve met and all the people here that have influenced me.
These bittersweet feelings stirring inside me intensifies my gratitude for the spiritual being that touched me four years ago. Thank you for leading me to Pinewood, and thank you Pinewood for making it hard to say goodbye.