I’m graduating.

It’s weird saying this, unimaginable, really, that the distant reality that has lurked in the back of my mind for the last 12 years has become the present. In a few months, I won’t be sit- ting here, at my desk in Minnetonka. I’ll be off in college, off at Caltech, a couple thousand miles away from home.

And I’m struck, above all else, by what I’m leaving behind. My last debate tournament, math team competition, and science bowl are all long gone. My last show in Minnetonka’s pit orchestra has just passed by. And my last day of school here is soon to follow.

All of these things, so fresh in my mind, so close to me, will eventually, inevitably, become distant memories. Time moves on, even if we do not. It’s saddening and frightening to be leaving all of these experiences, now just recollections, behind me, as I march forward into my life, into a strange and unfamiliar future.

At graduation a few years ago, I took part in a performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, a song focused on themes of failure and the inevitability of Time and Fate. At the time, I thought it strange, ill-fitted to the situation. Only now do I recognize its place.

For in going to college, I am thrust into the unknown. I don’t know what challenges I may face, what obstacles I must overcome. Undoubtedly, these difficulties exist. Undoubtedly, I will struggle and fail.

But though I face fears in the unknown, I am not afraid. No, instead, I stride with confidence, knowing that those that I have left behind match my steps, as we all move with the passage of time. I am not alone, nor are any of us. Even in our separate cities, states, and countries, we share the same roots; we share the common link of this high school. For, though most of us will part ways when we leave MHS, we go along our separate paths together, as one class of 2012.