By Andrew Miner

To the Class of 2015,

If all has gone according to plan, the class of 2014 has left the building for good. Assuming the mantle as the next senior class at EGHS are the members of the class of 2015. That seems right and fitting. For the rising seniors, the class of 2014 is out of sight and out of mind. You won’t think of us until you open a textbook next fall and look down to see one of our names written on its inside cover. By the fall, you will believe you are smarter, quicker, faster, stronger, and better than we were at that time in our lives, and you will attempt to completely dismantle our records and achievements on and off the field of play. Go ahead. We honestly hope you do. We know where you are coming from because we were there a short 12 months ago. But now we are freshmen again. Being on the top was incredible, but nothing gold can stay. Our dawn has turned to day.

This is the year you have been waiting for, and as you return to school in August, you will vow to savor every minute of it. Yet, each minute that ticks by next year will wind down a clock that picks up speed with each passing hour. October’s cooler nights and changing leaves also bring a change of heart. Early application deadlines, SATs, senior project, and the schoolwork of senior schedule will combine to make you wish for June to come quickly, and it obliges. Thanksgiving gives way to Christmas, and snow covers the ground for weeks. By the time it clears and all your applications are done, there is nothing to do but wait and worry. Some of your activities and sports will have ended for the last time. Concerts will come and go. Those field hockey, lax, and basketball uniforms you were so proud to wear will be turned in for good and will belong to someone else next season. Your dreams of the big senior season, making it to the championship, landing the lead role, or finally beating our biggest state rival in some competition may have withered and died by late winter, while other dreams may hold their hue just a bit longer. Eventually, the hour comes when they are all buried in high school lore. Spring brings decisions and the year’s first flowers, but flowers always give way to leaves. Soon you will be leaving, too. For those not focusing on the clock, the spring can also bring new love, new passions, and a renewed sense of purpose, but as the days grow longer, your time grows shorter. Suddenly, you will find yourself with a group of friends admiring the sun setting low in the evening sky, and you will not recognize your own shadow.

It is that fast. Often faster when viewed in hindsight. For the first time, we become victims of the velocity of time, as we perceive the golden morning filled with promise blending into the approaching noontime. We are not going to tell you to enjoy every minute or to try to make it go slower, for no one can stop time and some parts are truthfully more painful than pleasurable. We will tell you to put one foot in front of the other and try your hardest to not get stuck in any one moment. Expand to fill this campus as you walk through this special year. There is no place for us here anymore. It’s your time now, and we hope you break every one of our records and rejoice in those victories that escaped our grasp. We hope you find the echo of our joy in classrooms and on stage and amplify it. That’s your job now. We have walked out that door because it was our time to go and, in part, to make room for you. When you are on the other side of this year, we will meet up and shake hands at the chain-link fence surrounding the Avengers’ baseball diamond, as we watch a game we are both aching to play. We will share a word or two about the uniquely disorienting experience of graduating from high school, and we will be grateful our roots are planted side by side along the courtyard wall where we first dreamed of staying gold.

Truly,

The Class of 2014