Senior Year
THE FXBG ADVANCE SUNDAY 8/2/26 MIDDAY READ
By Hailey Waurio, ADVANCE CONTRIBUTOR
Ten days before the start of school.
The lack of sunshine on my doorstep troubles me this morning. The sea of rain we got last week leached away all of the color out of the front yard, while the back is still littered with puddles of mud. That makes my dog Rocky happy, but it’s irritating trying to get it off of him.
Well, irritating for my father, anyway. I’m not about to volunteer to chase Rocky around the house to clean him off. That’s Dad’s job, and it’s hilarious to watch.
Rocky’s like that—always using something annoying to make me laugh. The first time I took him home in the car, he tossed up his lunch my lap.
We’ve always gotten along great.
My weather and dog thoughts this morning are interrupted by a text notification about picking my parking spot for the upcoming school year.
It reads: “2027 SENIORS: August 5th, Parking Spot Permits @9AM.” The notice stops me in my tracks, because how can summer possibly be coming to an end already?
I feel as though I’ve wasted away the entire season, which, looking back on it, I didn’t. I was basically on vacation the entire month of July. So what can I possibly be moping about?
Maybe I’m just anxious about the upcoming year. Twelfth grade has always seemed like Armageddon. Twelve years of schooling, relearning arithmetic, memorizing grammar rules, then finding out that even math has letters? And now it’s here, and condensed into the approaching two semesters. All my friends are wondering what their college essays will be about, and where they’ll apply. As if 18 years can be crammed into a handful of application forms.
At least my application process will be different than my peers’. I already committed to play field hockey at Christopher Newport University, which just means that though I don’t have to worry about finding the perfect college in such a short time, I’ll have the added stress of working out like crazy all year and next summer too so I’ll be in the best shape for my new team.
Still, I’m lucky to have found my school so fast, and I can tell in conversations with my friends that the pressure of college is eating at them.
Not that I have it much easier. The anticipation of college and the ramifications of every choice I make senior year are central points of discussion between my parents and me.
How are we going to pay?
What major will I choose?
Scholarship this, scholarship that.
Meanwhile, the only questions I want to focus on are: A) What will I paint my senior parking spot? and B) What in the world am I going to wear the first day of school?
I know what you’re wondering: Am I the kind of privileged kid who brushes off her parents for trite concerns such as parking spots and clothes? I don’t think I am. It’s just, the idea of preparing for the future really rattles me, and if I can focus on something menial instead, maybe take baby steps, then the idea of senior year seems… slightly less bad.
Not that I think it will all be bad. Going back to school means reuniting with friends and teachers, people I wouldn’t get to see without Chancellor High. The relationships I’ve built there mean so much to me, and I take pride in being a good friend to my friends.
Sure, sometimes there’s drama. Sometimes it’s about a boy, sometimes a girl, sometimes just teammates being teammates. I really really try to avoid all of that, but all too often I seem to end up in the middle of things. Sometimes it’s my fault. Sometimes—well, I’ll think more about that later. And anyway, conflicts may be hard, but without them, the necessary growth in the transition from childhood to adulthood doesn’t happen.
Maybe that’s why I’m so nervous for this year. We truly are on the brink of graduation, but as I write this it’s thankfully not for another 297 days. I keep telling myself there’s plenty of time left, and that as seniors, our focus doesn’t need to be worrying on those application essays—it should be on enjoying the lasts in our final year of being a kid:
One last parking spot.
One last Homecoming.
One last Prom.
One last season with my teammates.
All added up into the final moment of our student careers.
Graduation.
The future won’t become terrifying out of nowhere. That tension has been with us since middle school. But we know we can manage the nerves and the fear because we’re all going through it together, one senior year day at a time.
So yes, the senior parking spot notification shook me, but maybe that’s just another one of those last things. It doesn’t mean I’m walking across the stage tomorrow; it just means I get to experience something that leaves my mark on the school. My own personally-painted parking spot.
And just because the sunshine isn’t here this morning doesn’t mean it won’t be here for the rest of the year. Sometimes you just have to stop looking at the clouds and realize there are plenty of bright days ahead, even if Rocky still manages to track mud into the house. By the time we walk across that stage, I imagine I’ll miss worrying about painting my spot and picking my first-day outfit. And I’ll definitely hate saying all those goodbyes.
But for now, I’ll just look forward to saying hello to the sunshine.
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Hailey Waurio is entering her senior year at Chancellor High School in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. She’ll be writing about this coming school year periodically for The Advance.
