Art by Scarlett Hatton.
Story by Annalise Bassett.
13 years of school, 12 years of Girl Scouts, eight years of concert band, four marching band seasons, three years on the Bagpiper staff, two and a half pep band seasons, two years of symphony orchestra, and one year in National Honor Society.
It does not feel like it has been that long.
Freshman year in marching band, the seniors told me that in just a few years, I would look back to freshman year and not feel like it had been that long. “It goes by fast,” they said.
They did not lie.
The past year has been full of heartbreak and crappy circumstances. But, when I reflect on my high school career as a whole, I do not see it as a negative experience. Sure, like others, I dealt with a lot of things that made things harder, such as mental health issues, time management struggles, and difficult classes. But, overall, I see the good.
When I look back on the last four years, I remember my first marching band performance in August 2017, when I felt high from performing. I chased that feeling for three more seasons after the 2017 season, and I met people who today I consider my closest friends. I remember the feeling of stepping onto the football field at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis and not being able to hear myself or anyone around me play in that sound vacuum of a stadium.
While I remember the heartbreak of our band not making it past Indiana State-School Music Association [ISSMA] Regionals in 2018 and 2019 and not having competitions at all in 2020, I choose to think back to October 2017 when we went to ISSMA Semi-State, the feeling of my fingers freezing in the 35-degree-weather during our performance and sitting close to friends with blankets around our shoulders in the stands after to keep warm. I think about the long bus rides with bad renditions of “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley and “Take On Me” by A-ha, across-the-bus lightsaber battles, and all of us being loopy from exhaustion on the way home. Those are moments that seem small when they are happening, but they seem big when they are gone.
This past season, while it was cut short, and it only had football game performances and our annual Parent Show, I hold the last memories close, such as getting to play a clarinet solo in the show and getting to walk at Senior Night. Marching band this season brought a sense of normalcy into my life when there was barely any normalcy to cling to.
Concert band brought that too–it is the extracurricular I have participated in since fifth grade, and I have known a few of my band friends since fifth grade or even before that. During the last two years, our state-level contests have been canceled due to the pandemic, but instead of sulking about that, I cherish the experience of playing at ISSMA State Qualifiers and ISSMA State Concert Band Finals sophomore year, and I am so thankful that we got to play three concerts in my final year.
Four years ago in eighth grade, when we were putting together our classes for freshman year, I needed an extra class that I could take. I considered tech theatre, since I had enjoyed being in tech for Highland Hills’s production of Singing in the Rain that year, but technical theatre would add too much to my already-busy extracurricular schedule since marching band would take up most of my free time. Since I enjoyed writing, my mom suggested I take Journalism I. I signed up for the class and loved it so much that I applied for the Bagpiper staff for my sophomore year.
Sometime in late April or early May freshman year, I found out from a friend in another class, who happened to be on staff, that he would be features editor and that I would be assistant features editor. That year, I wrote several columns, one of which earned two awards in October 2019, one at the Indiana High School Press Association [IHSPA] fall state convention and one at Indiana University Southeast [IUS]’s Media Day local contest. To this day, I still hear the 2018-2019 editor-in-chief [EIC], 2019 FC graduate Hannah Clere, telling me not to hesitate to give my opinion in a column, to be bold and confident and just say it. She made a large impact on me, with more than just that seemingly small piece of advice, in ways she cannot imagine.
Junior year, I was named features editor and continued to write columns. In late 2020 and early 2021, I earned five IHSPA awards and one IUS Media Day award for my work during junior year. Sometime in the middle of the second semester of junior year, I started considering applying for EIC. The main thing keeping me from considering it before that had been my marching band schedule, which kept me really busy during the fall and made it hard to stay after school for newspaper work sessions. Additionally, I knew that during senior year I would be clarinet section leader, so that would make it harder to miss band rehearsals. However, the 2019-2020 EIC, 2020 FC graduate Gracie Vanover, had been able to manage being a co-section leader in marching band and EIC at the same time, so in April 2020, when Mr. Lang sent out our applications for the next year, I put EIC as my top choice.
Friday, May 8, 2020, in the midst of e-learning and quarantine life, Mr. Lang and I had a Google Meet in which he told me I would be co-EIC with junior Jadon Stoner. I had gone into the Meet expecting an interview–I was dressed up slightly and my nerves were on edge–but I came out of it having been named the 2020-2021 co-EIC, and I had so many ideas for how to improve our staff. Today, I look back on that moment with such pride, and I am so proud of what this year’s staff has done, what I have done, and how much growth has occurred in even just the last couple of months. The Bagpiper staff, including current and past members, has left a huge impact on me. I will forever be grateful to these people, and I hope I have left a similar impact on them as they have on me.
As I prepare for my one AP test and wrap up my classes, I reflect on just how much I have changed in the last four years. I came into high school just a small and quiet 14-year old girl, and I will leave a well-rounded and outspoken 18-year-old woman. Thank you to the performing arts program, my Girl Scout troop, the Bagpiper staff, my teachers, and my friends. All of these groups and people have changed me in some way, for the better, and made me who I am today.
Thank you FC.
The Bagpiper 