It’s time to count the chips. Coming through the final stretch of my year and a half at Cedar Park High School, I now feel the whole thing took on a life of its own. I planned on carrying away my senior year like another trophy to add to my high school wall of memories, and found that that just wouldn’t do it justice. The passing year became a clever puzzle: fun to play at times, but difficult to solve. The result has put me in a frame of reference I’ll call “state of the arts.” And now there’s no turning back.

     At the start, there wasn’t anything new to being a senior. I continued old traditions and hobbies I had developed over the years, and added new interests and skills. But as my work branched, I found it was spreading into an amazing patchwork. This last semester especially, everything has added up; with every week that went by, pieces fell into the mosaic; with every hour of studying and review changed me as a student and as a person. Now I view life more than ever as a work of art in itself, one that must be cultivated to be enjoyed.                       

      In hindsight, I can’t imagine any other way this year would have ended up. If there was, I’ve outdone the alternative. My hackneyed final semester schedule – triple blocks of writing and foreign language classes – will be laid to rest, and I can go off and do some other crazy thing with my life – that is to say, college. But through all of it, I’ll stay just as cool as I am now, and will remember to keep my eyes peeled for opportunities and ways to prosper out in the wide world. Like being the first businessman to charter a commercial cruise-line to the moon. Or maybe inventing a new form of gardening…

     The most thrilling thing about this year of my life has been its diversity. Sometimes I grew bored in the process, but treading onward I learned to love it. Never had I imagined I’d be writing a senior thesis on Indian fiction and magical realism, reading Russian novels, writing ghetto poetry, or doing stand-up rap renditions on Tuesdays at Coffeehouse. There was the dead zone – hours spent in work on articles and papers, and even later nights spent with pots of coffee scratching up Economics assignments. Early morning reviews, catching the news in Spanish, copying Japanese characters. Looking up that occasional reference in German, and going beyond beginner’s Greek. Reviewing for the last AP exams, visiting colleges, hanging out at UT’s Perry-Castaneda library, fun & games with friends. In consequence, I’ve become part of the blogging, jogging, caffeine-swigging, and sushi-popping literati. After all, this “fifth-column” will be running things in a few years, if we keep up doing our best. So stay calm while we take over, and stay cool.