The end of my time at Roosevelt is here and thus, I have been reflecting. This place, this community is full of some very special people and things. Roosevelt is not perfect by any means and there is a good deal to be improved upon. But at the end of the day, I want to walk out of this building for the last time as a student on May 31st remembering the parts of this school that had a profound, lasting and positive impact on my life. Let us take the good and carry it with us into the next chapters of all of our lives.

This year’s senior class had the unique experience of beginning high school through a computer screen. We did not have that instant connection other grades have had before us. We instead got to sit alone in our rooms with a global pandemic roaring outside. When we returned to in-person learning at the start of our sophomore year, we had to integrate into a school community and learn how to be high schoolers later than most.

Our community is full of amazing clubs, programs, and most of all teachers that students have the chance to interact with on a daily basis. When coming back after the pandemic I found that my teacher’s were the thing that had the biggest impact and made becoming a high school student easier. I asked a few students in the class of 2024 a very important question: “What is one person, club, class, or other thing in this building that has had a lasting, profound affect on you?”  As for this year’s graduating class, many students have been greatly impacted by their teacher with some saying “Ms. R. She is a saint for sticking with me,” and “Ms. Lane in the theater department is pretty awesome, she has helped me through a lot of things.” Our teachers are not only there to help us with academics and those of us who are really lucky, have found that one teacher, or maybe those few who we connect with and who we feel understand us. These relationships are the beings of our networks for the rest of our lives.

The other piece of the Roosevelt community that has made high school exponentially better is the clubs we offer. In my three in person years, I have participated in multiple clubs and all of them have improved my time at Roosevelt. I can only speak for the clubs I have been a part of but looking at the long list of clubs we do offer, one can’t help but be inspired. 

The piece of my Roosevelt career that has had the most impact on me as a person is my time as Editor-in-Chief of our School Newspaper, . Voices of Roosevelt. This paper has taught me so much and has made me a better person and writer. I will forever be grateful for people I’ve met and all the programs I have been a part of at Roosevelt High School.