I’m back at Café Brioche in Rice Village, the same cafe where I’ve written every article, countless essays, tackled countless math problems, and shared so many laughs with beautiful souls. But this time, I’m pushing through the fog of senioritis, sitting here with my iced coffee and éclair, determined to write my final piece. But truly, what do you even write for a ‘goodbye’?

It’s a strange feeling, knowing this is my final farewell to a place that has shaped so much of who I am. High school, with all its ups and downs, its hard lessons and unforgettable moments, is coming to an end.

Senior year has always felt like this faraway thing, like some moment I would eventually get to but never truly grasp. It was something that belonged to rom-com movies, to the older kids in the hallways I once looked up to. But now, it belongs to me.

High school is a strange, complicated, and beautiful thing—four years of walking the same halls, sitting in the same classrooms, seeing the same faces. Some become family, some become memories, and some just pass by, blending into the background of it all. It’s a collection of late-night study sessions, inside jokes, spontaneous adventures, hallway conversations, and days that feel like they’ll last forever—until suddenly, they don’t.

I walked into Lamar halfway through freshman year after transferring from a school where I didn’t quite fit. And don’t get me wrong, it was terrifying. Stepping into an entirely new world mid-year, trying to carve out a space for myself among people who had already carved theirs. But looking back, it was also one of the most life-changing decisions of my life. Because what truly stands out to me after all these years, are the people—the ones who changed me, shaped me, and gave me someone to miss after we walked across that stage.

Theater was my first home here. Acting taught me how to be brave. To stand in front of an audience and command a space. To pour my heart into a performance, even when I wasn’t sure I had it in me. I spent hours in the Black Box, lost in characters, learning how to tell stories that mattered. I found people that became family and directors that taught me how to believe in the “magic of theatre.” In a way, I found myself in all the roles I played—the shy ones, the bold ones, the ones who carried more on their shoulders than they let on.

But theater didn’t just give me confidence, it also gave me a voice. And eventually, that voice found its way onto the page, the same storytelling that captivated me on stage became the foundation for my love of journalism. The ability to step into someone else’s world, to capture their experiences, their emotions, their truths—it was everything I had ever loved about acting, but in a different form. Journalism became my second home, my place to ask questions, challenge ideas, and bring stories to life, and I am so excited to say that I will be continuing to do that in the next four years to come.

In these past four years I have loved and I have lost and I have grown in ways I never saw coming. These moments have been filled with stories; some I’ve written, some I’ve lived, and some I am still trying to figure out. 

So here’s to the past, the present, and the future waiting for us on the other side. As I sit here, writing this in the same cafe with the same  iced coffee, I realize that every moment, every challenge, every high and low, was leading to this: growth, change, and the next adventure.