This article was originally published by Cape Fear Voices/Teen Scene. It has been republished with permission as part of We Are’s international student voice partnership.
Change is coming, and quickly. My senior year has begun at Brunswick County Early College High School. This time next year I will be a freshman at university. When I consider all that is coming over the next year, it is about as comforting as a horror movie. I am hoping, then, to use this time that I have in preparation for university. I have always been a reader, specifically of fiction novels. My perspective as I look at the world is to see it as one all-encompassing story. Within this story are many smaller stories and sub-plots. My life is but a single subplot in the overarching narrative.
We have all heard the saying “starting a new chapter in life,” but for me, due in part to my readings, this phrase means something slightly different. In many of the novels that I have read, the perspective of the novel will often change between chapters. One chapter may end with one character running from the villain, while the next begins with a different character charging in to save the day.
The coming change in the chapter of my life means a change in perspective. The chapter in which that young sixth grader wandered about their middle school, waiting for a hand to guide them, is finished. So, too is that awkward chapter involving the wide-eyed high school freshman, the one who first logged into this school virtually due to the pandemic, trying desperately to navigate the online environment. The confident college freshman who will be spending their first night in a dorm room next year has not been written yet. I, right now, am something in between. Something that is not quite a part of the previous chapters yet builds off of the lessons and experiences gained from them.
My perspective this year is changing vastly, and it is almost as if I am becoming a different character altogether. It has quickly become obvious that I will never again be that sixth grader or that high school freshman. Those chapters have come and gone, leaving only the next to be written. Using what has been learned from the chapters I have lived, this year will be spent in preparation for the next chapter of my life. A chapter in which I will become something completely different from the kid that I used to be. I will be gaining a new perspective. The perspective of an adult. Change is coming quickly. The pages turn without pause. I, for one, am looking forward to this new chapter.
