We are now down to the remaining hours until the end of the 2009-10 school year. At the same time we are 83 days and an hour away from the start of the 2010-11 school year.
There is some security in knowing that it continues in a routine kind of way. The cycle continues. When I was a senior in high school - yes we actually had buildings and bells -- for some reason I wanted to be in school when that final bell rang on my final day in high school.
No one in my family had ever been to college - so that was an unknown. My mother had graduated from high school but not my family and every few family members in my extended family. So high school graduation was a big thing.
Well I was in a social studies class and like most kids I knew the rotation of the second hand on the school clock and could anticipate when in made its final round to hit the moment when the bell would sound.
And it did and the bell rang. It rang its usual length and loudness. I sat there and listened and waited.
I had no idea what I was expecting to happen. On reflection I have lots of ideas of why I was doing that and what I might have been thinking but at that moment I can remember feeling -- "so that's it?"
The bell sound was gone. Many of my friends were out of the building with their shouts and screams and it was quiet. For some reason - you have to remember I was a teenager and teenagers frequently do not have to have reasons - I really thought I would feel and be something different. The world would be clearer, I would be smarter or wiser or older or something. But the seconds and the minutes passed as they did every other day.
I went out of the building and went to work.
The end of one thing is only the beginning of another. What we make of all of it, is what matters.
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