Dear Mavs,

These will be the days I remember: the great ones and the bad ones. This is what I’ll reminisce of when life gets difficult. I find solace in memories I’ve made within these walls. The time we’ve spent together has changed me. I’ve evolved from a squeaky voiced freshman into a senior with a confident baritone. It’s strange, I’ve never been so torn between excitement and fear. Over the last few months I’ve lied to myself and everyone else constantly, in an attempt to perpetuate mock confidence. I want to seem like someone who’s always known what their life is going to be after they leave high school. But in actuality, I’m making decisions that will shape my entire future and I have no clue what I even want. That’s frightening. But I know that right now, in my last weeks at Mead I want to cherish the remaining hours of my childhood. For most a high school diploma is the cornerstone of adulthood, the first step in the treacherous journey of finding one’s place in the world. But before I leave, I want to thank Mead High for all the time that has been put into making my childhood as great as it was. It took the combined effort of three principals, three baseball coaches, and six math teachers, but I made it to the end. I want to thank every teacher that stayed late with me to help me raise disappointing grades, every one of my peers who would let me copy something I didn’t understand, and every reference website for being so dope.

If my life in high school was a television series, this last month is like the series finale and finales always worry me. They have the chance to be awful and completely ruin the entire show, but they could also be a great and fitting end to such a monumental investment of time. Mead, over the years I don’t think I appreciated you as much as I should have. Mead may be a colony of Hicks in a cornfield, but in spite of all our disfunction, I couldn’t imagine being anything but a Maverick.

Goodbye and good luck,

Lucas Hale

“I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them”― Andy Bernard (The Office series finale)