Can you believe it? A little under seven years ago, we were eleven, tackling timetables, room changes and some seriously big people. Now we are the big people. When did the change take place? What happened in those six and a half years?
Can you remember your first day? The mix of fear and excitement, arriving at big school. Did your mum stand you in the back garden for a photo too, in all your uniform, leaving behind Junior School, where your hardest decision was whether to play ticky scarecrow or stuck in the mud or football?
As you stood there, those seven years were the future, they were exciting, they were things to be discovered, new experiences, new subjects, and new friends. Now it's all behind us, and we're almost too cool to live. There's an almost jaded feel hanging around the common room these days, a recognition that maybe we've learned all we can here, maybe there are no new experiences unless we get somewhere new to have them.
People seem more tired, more lacklustre. The fire has gone. Sure, we still love our friends, and for many leaving them behind seems almost impossible. But only almost. Because we know that this change has to happen, that we have to move on, that if we did stay here, as some people doubtless want to, we'd become truly stagnant. We've outgrown the common room. At the start of the year, last September, it didn't feel right sitting round the stereo. We'd look back over at the other side, a remembrance of being comfortable, of knowing who we were and where we fitted in.
Independent enough to be out of uniform, and to have frees, but there was still that comforting mass of almost-adults between the Real World and us. And then we crossed over, and now we're itching to get beyond the glass, to drive off, to do life. There's an increasing, if unspoken, recognition that we are almost adults. The mass of 18th parties attests to that legally, but more and more the people who walk past you, who sit and read magazines or sip a coffee, look like adults. They don't fit here anymore, in the world of bells and study periods and "miss" and "sir" . It all feels faintly ridiculous.
How then did we change? We met the world, and looked it in the eye. We had our first drink, our first girlfriend or boyfriend, or crush at least. We may have had our first (and hopefully last) cigarette, or first shag. First time in a bar, first time being truly wrecked. The first lost weekend, the first all night party. Been there, done that.
Now we're looking for something new, be it in the form of a revised purity scale for certain individuals, or simply a new chance at life for others. Adolescence has been about finding out who you are, what you like. Are you artistic or scientific? Do you love words, numbers or drawings? Can you look at a financial report and understand it, or do you fare better with a page of equations, or a page of words? Now you know the answers. Ask these questions to an eleven year old this September, and you'll get blank stares, but we know. We know ourselves, and we've grown to know each other. We know our friends favourite music, we know their crushes, everything about their relationships, and we may even know their hopes and aspirations. But increasingly, what we know about them is what they want to do. Where's it going? What comes next? There is a thirst for the future, because the past is the past. We've lived it, now what's next?
How then should we approach these last weeks at school? While a thirst for the future is a good thing, and shows above all how ready we are to move on, may I be so daring as to suggest something new? We've done the past, and the future is unknown. What of the present? The here and now? That is where the memories are made, the stuff you'll tell your kids. Sure, those memories in their nature come from the past, but if we don't live in the present, how are we to make them? So live for now. Laugh with your friends, for there are some you will loose contact with totally. Take time to tell people you appreciate that you appreciate them. Settle old disputes. Take time to notice life. The future will come, whatever we do. Whether we think about it or not.
We've loved, lost and learned in these years. Let us not forget them, then. They will always remain with us, they have shaped us. As we walk out of the door and say our final goodbyes, let us "go gentle into that good night". For it is life that awaits us, make no mistake about that. Open your eyes, there's a whole world out there. Wave goodbye to your companions thus far, and open your arms to welcome those who will walk with you for the next part of your journey.