BIANCA ZAHARESCU
Gargoyle senior editor
Posted Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Opinions

IT SEEMS LIKE such a long time ago already. No, not subbie orientation — that far back I can't even remember.

I'm talking about senior supper, putting my handprint up, disorientation picnic. Even graduation and all the subsequent parties feel so far away, complete with yearbook signing, reminiscing, and well-wishing for the future. I feel like I've been out of high school for ages, when really, it's only been a few days.

Today is a Tuesday; it's exactly noon right now as I write this. For the past year, I've spent every Tuesday noon in Room 210 with the small group of dedicated and awesome people that make up United for Uganda.

It's weird to realize that I will never again walk into that room at the start of lunch, put my backpack on the little round table at the front of the class, and then open it and take out my lunchbag as the weekly UFU meeting begins to unfold.

It's weird indeed, but that is such an understatement.

When I first began to make my poor attempts at starting UFU during April 2006, I never imagined that things would actually work. That we would actually end up being a real club: a small group of dedicated but awesome people that met in Room 210 every Tuesday at lunch and that, more importantly, had goals they worked hard toward reaching and problems they strove to overcome.

But this is only one of the many reasons I will never forget my time at Uni, and it's only one of the things that seems so unreal and far back in my memory already, only two days after graduation.

Five years of Uni High basketball? It'll probably take me the whole summer to internalize that and come to grips with the fact that next year, for the first time in what seems like forever, Halloween won't trigger the start of the intense conditioning Hell Week, the first week of the basketball season.

But what I really can't even imagine is that from now on, I won't be seeing these same familiar faces every day. There are so many people I have spent the past five years running into and seeing on a regular basis and who have, for all intents and purposes, earned a permanent spot in the back of my mind.

My interactions with some of these people, like Sue Kovacs, Ellen Lindsey, Lisa Micele, and Barb Aschenbrenner, were always brief and to the point. And yet these people were always there, exactly when and where I needed them to be, ready to help me with whatever I could possibly need them to.

As is the case with many things, I never fully appreciated and understood how large a role they played in shaping my time at Uni … until now, when I am faced with the reality that they won't be there anymore, and that, as far as my day-to -day life in the future is concerned, they're gone.

Then there are all the teachers I've had while at Uni. It's really clichéd (something I wanted badly to stay away from while writing this column), but I really wouldn't be who I am right now without them.

Honestly, the entire staff and all the teachers at Uni are amazing. I'm so thankful that I was able to learn from and be surrounded by so many wonderful teachers during the crucial growing period of my teenage years. I know I for one never said thank you enough, to anyone. So thank you.

And then, last but not least, there are my classmates, my teammates, my friends, my not-so-friends, and all the other faces in between. Of course, there's an infinitely larger sea of people waiting for me where I'm off to (the rest of the world outside of Uni).

But these Uni faces — from the girl who had been the best-ever best friend for me ever since subbie orientation (who doesn't need to be named, most likely) to Adam Joseph, the subbie who always made conversation with me — will pretty much be impossible to forget. Which is something I'm very thankful for.

RELATED: 2007 SENIOR COLUMNS

— Benjamin Fu: A tribute to the faculty and staff

— Ben Hyman: Let it be

— Michael Belmont: The fundamental theorem of life

— Bethany Hutchens: My goodbye