Co Editor-in-Chief Erika Schoemehl

Four fast years later and it is over. Graduation is coming up right around the corner. These past four years I have spent at South have honestly gone by so quickly. It seems like just last week I was a meager freshman walking the vast and crowded hallways to classes on my first day of school. I honestly cannot believe that high school is coming to an end, literally it has not set in yet.

High school has been quite the journey for me, I really have grown so much as a person and learned a lot about myself, which I know sounds very cliche but it is true.

Freshmen year was pretty breezy for me, not too hard, nothing too important really happened. However, I did get involved in sports that year, field hockey and lacrosse. These two sports were probably the highlight of freshmen year. I made so many friendships through those two sports, some lasted and some did not, but that is whole other story.

Sophomore year was a bit more rocky for me. My mom and her now ex-husband got divorced, which was great because he was terrible, but going through that process was pretty difficult, even though the guy was not my dad. Going through that though made me, my sister, and my mom all better and stronger people. Athletically sophomore year was good and not good. I was the JV field hockey captain, which was super fun. Lacrosse did not go to well that year for me, I got a concussion that caused me to miss the latter half of the season. Going through that concussion was pretty difficult, I could no longer do what I loved and looked forward to anymore. I recovered well from it though thankfully.

Junior year was a blast. My sister committed to play college lacrosse. I quit field hockey and began running cross country, arguably one of the best decisions of my high school career. I enjoyed running so much more than field hockey. Junior year I took some of the most fun classes of high school: chemistry, forensics, and crime and law. Lacrosse also went very well for me junior year. I made the all-conference team and racked up some really good stats. As most everyone knows, junior year is when you begin to look at colleges. I have hopped around so many colleges my parents could not keep up. Did I want to go to Lindenwood? U of Minnesota? DePaul? Mizzou? Or somewhere totally different? Oh, and it is completely okay to not know where you want to go, I just decided about two weeks ago.

Ah, now onto senior year. So many memories. Cross country season went very well for me, unfortunately on my last race I was eight seconds off of my PR, but I still had a blast, especially in Kansas. This year is when the big decisions had to be made: college. I bounced around a lot, and that is completely okay. I ended up taking a lacrosse scholarship at a medium sized university in the Twin Cities: Concordia University- St. Paul. I still do not know if I made the right decision to go there, but that is okay. Remember, always have a backup plan, which I do. I plan on studying criminal justice and going into some type of law enforcement, which is what I have wanted to do since I was 12. Will I actually end up doing that? Who knows, I sure know I do not know.

Heading off into graduation I feel satisfied with my high school career. I made a lot of friends, and have way too many good memories of my time here to write them all down, it would take a book to document all my memories. I feel like I should give some wise old senior advice. Always trust yourself, sometimes other people do not have the best intentions for you in mind. Keep your health in check, eat well, sleep well, and treat yourself well. Be true to yourself, at the end of the day you are all you have, and you do not want to be a fake person.

Thank you for all the memories, good, bad, and ugly. They have shaped me into the person that I am today.

Erika is going to Concordia University-St. Paul on a lacrosse scholarship. She plans on majoring in Criminal Justice.