Returning to Lawrence High School

Oh, the high school. Though the high schoolers complained endlessly about the stench, the location, the heating system, really, every inch of it, but when we left, we were sullen and upset. It is flawed but it is still our school, our home. After a few months at Lawrence Middle School, we are finally returning on April 3.

This year has been quite the experience. They say senior year is something special but I don’t think any of us thought it would end up like this. After Hurricane Sandy and a move to the middle school, many of the seniors at Lawrence were upset and disappointed at, what was supposed to be, our best year of high school. The student body as whole, and many of our teachers and staff, had our homes battered, torn, even destroyed. After several weeks of getting back into our routines and making our lives feel normal again, we were uprooted from our school. While a lot of us are anxious and excited to go back to the high school, I personally do not mind being at the middle school. It’s not to say I absolutely love being here but I no longer dread coming to the middle school every morning.

Routines are comforting, reassuring even, and once I stepped back into my routines at the middle school, everything fell back in place. After the initial few weeks, the new classrooms slowly evolved into my usual ones. I was in the same classes with the same students. To be honest, with all the work piling up, I had more important things to worry about than who my hall mates are. James Schneider, a senior, said, “The truth is it doesn’t really matter where we are, it doesn’t change the quality of our teachers, our classes, our friendships. While the middle school is inconvenient for our off periods, it doesn’t matter where we are, its who we’re with.”

Student body president, Ruth Enriquez, finds that being back at the high school will have a larger meaning for the students that just physically being back in our classrooms. She says, “I feel like returning to the high school will overall return us back to normalcy and I know a lot of people are excited to be in, what some feel are like, their homes again. It’s one step closer to putting Sandy behind us.”

I can say that although it isn’t the senior year I expected, it will definitely be a memorable one.