When people start high school, they’re usually so excited. Everyone says that high school is the best four years of your life. Now I am two weeks away from walking across the stage.

Coming into Carroll as a freshman, I was a very content person. I didn’t really talk to anyone or tell anyone about myself. After about a few months in freshman year, I started making some of the best friends I could have. They gave me a safe place to talk about myself and open up to them about things.

Going into sophomore year, life at Carroll was just starting to bloom for me. I started getting into stage crew and different clubs. I began volunteering for things at Carroll and started being, I would say, a good steward.

Junior year is just rolling in and I’m opening up to new experiences at Carroll. Football games, basketball games, and new activities were introduced to me. I began to be really close to teachers and met new students that I never talked to before. But March 15, 2020, is where everything normal turned abnormal, when everything we once thought was a regular turned into a health hazard. COVID had set everyone back. Seniors of 2020 couldn’t have their last moments together as a class. Everyone else couldn’t have a last laugh.

Now here we are, senior year, in a pandemic. This was a new way of life we had to adapt to. Desks pushed separated apart, masks, staying six feet apart, and having one way walking, wasn’t an ideal senior year. You want to think senior year will be the best year out of all your four years of high school. But by the grace of God, our faculty and staff made that possible for us students.

I am so grateful for the time and work I had at Carroll. The teachers, staff, and students were such a blessing to me. Life at Carroll was such an honor and new experience for me. I can’t say they were my best years, but I can say they were my most educational, determined, and most memorable years I have had so far. Carroll will always be a part of me, and I’m forever thankful for the opportunities that I was given to come to Archbishop John Carroll High School.