Samantha Vassallo

Writing this is something that is very hard for me to do. Saying goodbye to Carroll is something that doesn’t feel real even though it is only a week or two away. Even though Carroll might have taken me through some rough patches, it has been part of my life for four years.

Flashback to freshman year when my sister and all her friends, who were seniors at the time, would constantly say to me “enjoy your time here it goes by so fast” or “trust me the time here is gonna go by so fast.” When they would say that, I would brush it off, thinking that they were just saying it because they were graduating soon and their time was almost over. But in reality, the time really does go by so fast. It feels like just yesterday I was sitting in freshman orientation being so excited to go to Carroll and start my high school experience. Now four years and one pandemic later, those years are almost up. It still doesn’t feel real that in a few short weeks I will be leaving Carroll behind and moving onto my next adventure at Temple.

Since I’ve been at Carroll, I can always remember myself saying things like “I can’t wait to leave” or “get me outta here” or “I just want to graduate already.” But now that those wishes are coming true I almost don’t want to leave. Now, don’t get me wrong, I wanna graduate and go to college, but having to leave my friends and start a new journey is an extremely daunting task.

There are few that make leaving even harder than just having to start a new journey. One of them is Mrs. Gimpel’s class. Her class is always so fun and she’s a great person and teacher. She is one of the few teachers that actually treat us like adults and is willing to talk to us about taboo subjects.

One of the other things that makes leaving bitter-sweet is ACTS. ACTS has been a part of life since freshman year and I have met my best friends through ACTS. Without ACTS, my Carroll experience would have simply been worse.

All of this being said, I am very excited to go to college and start something new, but at the same time leaving Carroll is something that doesn’t feel real and is a very sad thing for me to do.