Make it fun

Good afternoon class of 2025! If you would have known me 4 years ago you might not have ever thought I would have made it here today. I’m sure most of you know what it was, and going through that experience as a little 14 year old freshman really taught me to appreciate the rest of my high school years as I thought I lost it all that day. It made me realize how lucky I am to go to school here with the classmates that I have grown up with, with the teachers that have always supported me, and with the amazing community that Oak Hill has in general. After that experience and the rest of my high school career I learned to just have fun and not take things for granted. As a senior now I look back at all the years I’ve spent here and what I wish I would have done differently or what I am glad that I did. 

My biggest words of advice to anyone, but especially underclassmen, is to take your time, to just slow things down, and appreciate this once in a lifetime high school experience. Since my freshman year I just wanted to be grown, I wanted to graduate, and be done with school. Freshman me thought everything to do with school was so stupid and such a waste of time. I would do everything I could to get out of class or a day off from school, skip an assembly or not participate in small school activities, I was just doing anything to rush through what I thought were gonna be a long miserable 4 years of my life. Turns out these last 4 years have been the best time of my life and went by way faster than I ever could have imagined, and now I sit here as a senior, wishing I did more in that time. I regret not participating in things like spirit week and assemblies because I thought they were corny and useless, or choosing to start a job at 14 years old which made me quit soccer and basketball. All my friends, coaches, and parents around me told me to keep playing sports and that I’ll regret choosing to quit, but to a young boy who didn’t care about school and just wanted money, it was a no brainer to quit and start a job. Looking back now there is a part of me that does regret not playing sports in my highschool years. I thought I was just too cool to have fun at school so I would disregard anything extra at school. But it is because of all of those things that made me realize there’s more fun in life than trying to overlook school and trying to have fun in not school-appropriate ways. 

Between last year and this year something really got to me to start appreciating school and having more fun with it. I’ve always been one to mess off with friends or get in trouble in class or with the law, so to myself I was always having fun. But instead of doing those things, I started playing basketball again, I joined JMG leadership, took a little more challenging classes for myself, and just cared a little bit more about school. The most important part of all that was I always found fun in everything I was doing. If you are not having fun with anything in life, you’ll never want to keep doing it. You always need to find the fun and positive side of things like school, jobs, sports, or even a relationship. If not, you’re just gonna want to give up on those things and you might build a hatred for those things. Now as we walk out the big double doors, or even for the ones just walking in, or wherever we might be at this point in life, let’s go fulfill our lives with fun and accomplish everything we have wanted to. Being a part of class of 2025 was the most fun experience I have had during my childhood and I know my classmates had a good ride too. Congratulations class of 2025, we cooked.

“fun” by hodgers is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.