To the class of 2024, it’s been an honor spending these last four years with you. Walking into high school for the first time is a scary thing especially when all that’s looking back at you is covered faces. Building connections was tough due to all the roadblocks in the way. But one of the main ways I was able to build connections between myself and other students was throughout the extracurricular activities at NPHS. From the drama program to the poetry club, I was able to become friends with people that I had never even seen before in the halls. But with the Cougar Courier I was able to do more than just build connections with fellow students, I was able to learn from them as well.
I didn’t speak at a meeting until about halfway through my sophomore year but with just listening I was able to learn about my fellow writers’ passions and what drove them to write. I am forever grateful to the Cougar Courier and the life changing opportunities it has provided for me. The title as an Editor-in-Chief of the Cougar Courier is one that I will always hold close to my heart with pride. It brings me comfort knowing that the Courier is in good hands next year with the fantastic journalist Isabelle Giammarco stepping up as the new Editor in Chief, as well as the amazing Nina Omanyo and Grace Chipel as her managing editors.
High School is not something that comes easy to me, I am not an honor roll student or some sort of prodigy. But clubs such as the Newspaper, Drama, and Poetry clubs provide students like myself the opportunity to show that success isn’t always a Skyward notification or a cord at graduation. To me success is passion, success is to feel so extremely about something that you have to share it. Success can be submitting an article about the school lunch table controversy. Success can be practicing sides for your first ever drama club audition. Success can be whatever you chose for it to be. As long as you believe in it, then it deserves to be known. So I’d like to wish success to all of my fellow graduates because dreams don’t end when you graduate high school, they just begin coming true.
