When I was a freshman, there was a senior in one of my classes who told all of us young, naïve ninth grade souls that “High school flies, man.” It was a difficult concept to agree with when it seemed to be taking millenniums just for the clock to hit 11:35 so that we could go to C lunch. Now, with the first quarter of my final year at Harriton already over, his truism seems more reasonable.

For all of the times (not THAT many, I swear) that I’ve told myself and anyone who would listen that I hated everything about Harriton and couldn’t wait to go to college, it’s difficult to come to terms with the fact that I actually will be graduating in just a little more than six months. There are going to be many, many things that I will miss about high school, from the obvious examples, such as my friends, to other subtle things that I probably won’t be able to name until I have to experience life without them.

Maybe I’m alone in this, but it also makes me a little sad that soon I won’t be a part of Harriton’s collective consciousness. It’s strange to think that a majority of the seniors I knew as a freshman won’t have any student connections left here after the class of 2013 graduates. None of the freshmen, sophomores, juniors, or seniors will have ever played on a sports team or been in a club with any of them. As the years pass, they will become even further removed from Harriton. It won’t be their school anymore. And eventually, the same thing will happen to my class. And then the next class. And the one after that.

(Unless the world does end this December. In that case, the contents of this column are largely irrelevant.)

I understand that everyone graduates high school and gets older and does move on, eventually, to bigger and better things like careers and families. At the moment, though, it still seems strange to me that in just a few years, no one at the place where I currently spend most of my time will know that I ever existed.