ANDREA PARK
Gargoyle senior editor
Posted Thursday, May 29, 2008

ON THE LAST day of school I was sitting in the lounge staring at the big blue wall in front of me in awe of all of the handprints that adorn it.

For no particular reason I took an especially long time gazing at Dan Krier’s handprint. A silver dotted line snaked around his fingers, his palm, his name, and the year he graduated: 1994.

With my exceptionally mediocre math skills, I calculated approximately how many handprints were left there since that Senior Supper evening in 1994 when Dan chose to make his mark on Uni in a bright yellow.

Thirteen years times 60 handprints is 780.

By the end of my Senior Supper on Wednesday night, approximately 844 students had entered Uni as small, scared subbies and left as cocky seniors since the time when Dan exited Uni’s hallways to start afresh.

That day in the lounge I was, for the first time in a while, overwhelmed by how little and unimportant I am in the grand scheme of Uni things. What, other than a handprint, will I leave for Uni?

The answer is probably nothing, and I’m not quite sure if I feel too bad about that. In 14 years from now I will be another anonymous, random handprint on that big blue wall for the students in the lounge, just like Dan is to me.

What, then, has Uni left me?

Well, that’s really a tough one to answer.

Undeniably, I have extremely mixed emotions about my tenure at Uni High. At times, when I am feeling especially bad for myself, I feel as if Uni is the sole reason for all of my problems.

At these times I wish I had made more friends. I wish I had done more activities other than swimming, or had the time to take swimming more seriously. I wish homework and tests hadn’t had been such an enormous part of my high school career. I wish I had taken different classes. I wish I hadn’t let the fact of going to a school with 299 other bright and talented individuals make me feel any less about myself.

I wish Uni had not robbed me of so many hours that I could have spent finding out who I am.

On the other, I am so intensely grateful to have been afforded the opportunity to go to such a great school.

Seriously, I don’t think that at any other high school the teachers are as insanely dedicated, passionate, and just all-in-all flippin’ amazing as the ones we’ve got at Uni.

Not nearly enough students realize that Craig Russell stays up late into the night to prepare PowerPoint slideshows for his math class or that Jim “Ray” Carrubba takes time out of his evening to chat to you on AIM about your various difficulties with physics.

The friends that I made at Uni are all equally as amazing.

The time when Jessica Stark forsook studying for her biology test in order to talk to me about my boy problems, when Sarah Pfander came to my house at 10 o’clock to bake a cake on a school night, when Micah Berman asked me to prom by making a “Prompel” bottle, when Anna Cangellaris and I sat in her car sipping on chocolate milk, and when Ruth Welch made a 6-foot-long sign on opening night of Big Show are all just small examples of how awesome my friends are.

On the evening of Senior Supper as I was leaving my mark on Uni, I wondered what my pink handprint represents.

My high school experience has had its ups and downs. Uni has strengths, but also certainly has flaws.

So, at the end of the day, I would say that my Uni High experience was average. There was nothing super special about it, but there also wasn’t anything super horrible.

But that’s the beauty of Uni.

I am one average student who has left Uni with one handprint, and Uni has left me with one average experience. But I think that’s the cool part. Despite the times I wish I had never come to this school, I will always fondly look back on my time at Uni.