This is my final and shortest article in The Profile, and my final farewell to Horizon High School. As I write this I have still not yet completely realized that I will no longer be writing for my favorite class, and that I will instead be forced to branch out into the world and curate my own content by myself. I realize that I leave multiple article series unfinished, such as articles concerning Fandoms and Cults, but I believe that, just for once, I can stand to leave it unfinished here. Maybe I’ll come back to them when I write without the class, or maybe they’ll just sit on this school’s website forever- or at least until our Principal finally decides to read what we write.

I find myself bitter at the thought of leaving the school, but also completely elated at knowing that I will never have to deal with half of our school administration again. Although I will not be stating all my reasons here, I will say that I have never felt such relief in my academic life at the thought of never having to see one particular administrator’s face again. 

I have written for the school for almost three years now, and am saddened by the fact that I will no longer be able to do so. Journalism was, to me, a great comfort. It allowed me to explore my creative interests and engage in experiences that I never would have otherwise had. 

In the back of my mind, I still think that I will return to Horizon for next year. I still feel the dread that comes with the end of the school year and the promise of a new one to come, and I don’t believe that part of me realizes that I will not return.

I did not particularly enjoy my time here- it was long, arduous, tedious, and thousands of other synonyms for depressing and repetitive. I’ve lost more friends than I would like to admit, developed a special type of distaste and distrust for our admins (thanks for never reading, Ms. Fleeman. I know you won’t see this until I’m long gone), and realized that no matter how hard I have or will try, I will be unable to forget certain traumatic experiences that Horizon subjected me to. 

But I also realize that as I write this, I have also gained hundreds of new experiences that came from friends and teachers who truly cared about me. It was in the various classes I took with Ms. Depaz that I learned to contact our government officials, how Cease and Desists work, and that distrusting the local governing authority is perfectly acceptable. It was in my Trigonometry class that I learned that certain teachers do not care as much about you as they should, and what academic despair truly feels like. It was here that I got the school newspaper into trouble with cults and admins, here that I shared my love for writing, and here I allowed myself to accept that I am an imperfect human being who makes mistakes daily. 

This was my last year in the Journalism program, and my last year at Horizon. This year, the class was taught by Ms. Schmidt, and I would like to thank her for allowing me to know her, and for herself allowing me to get into various funny (albeit concerning) shenanigans that may or may not affect me and others for the rest of our lives. Although I love the way I was taught in this class, I am not above admitting that it was imperfect and not what many students expected. I am excited to see what she will do in the future, be it simply for the class or career as a whole.  The last of the original Journalism students, Savannah Birch, will not be graduating with us this year, as she is instead going to be a Senior next year. If, Savannah, you do read this, I want you to know that I enjoyed being in the same class as you for two years, and that I genuinely believe that you will be successful in a career centered around writing, or whatever it is you do. I look forward to seeing more from you in the future, especially with your book.

To everybody else in the class (with the exception of a certain someone who threw a dollar at me and had to leave the class mid-year), I hope you know that I am grateful for you guys putting up with me, and that I believe you guys will be successful in whatever it is you do. 

I don’t like saying goodbye to anything, because I feel like there could be so much more that could happen, and that to end it right then with a “good-bye” means refusing to see the full story (it’s part of why I have such a hard time writing conclusions), so I will not be saying goodbye here. I’d say “See you later”, but that would imply that I somehow come back to Horizon as a student and begin writing for the newspaper again, and I don’t think that’d be the healthiest thing to do. Instead, I guess I’ll just end it here, with two article series unfinished and an uncertain future ahead. Good luck for your upcoming years, everybody, and I hope to see you all again (with certain exceptions) in one form or another.