For some reason, this homecoming week just doesn’t feel the same. For me, it’s a bittersweet feeling knowing that this will be my last high school homecoming week, forever.

The thing is, I want this week to go by slowly so I have time to enjoy all of the activities, but I also want it to go by fast since preparing for everything is so stressful.

Knowing that this is my last homecoming week of high school made me reminisce about my experiences with my class in the previous years.

Remember how our freshman class was the first class to not have a step routine? Yeah, I was a part of that. And yeah, it was embarassing. But our class’s step group came back with a BOOM and won first place the next year. How’s that for a comeback?

Of course my classmates also remember our class cheer and how it started off “Freshmen, we ready?” Some of the boys thought it was hilarious to answer under their breath, “no….” Then the entire class started to laugh, and we never really took that seriously even during the actual class cheer competition.

Freshman year was full of mistakes and mishaps, but I always thought of that year as carefree and fun. Even though we placed last in overall homecoming spirit points, our class was still proud of the work we did.

We took our prior experiences of homecoming week as a lesson learned when we moved on to our sophomore year.

Remember when Mr. Lopez became our class advisor? We were unsure of how things would turn out since we had a new leader of our class. Look at us now, the bond between our class and Mr. Lopez has bloomed into a friendship. He pushed us and made us realize that we are one class, but even better, he made us realize that we are one family.

Junior year is when we started to get real serious.

Remember when we got all those fancy props to use during class cheer? The purple bags with our names on it and the mini megaphones. Those were pretty darn cool if I say so myself.

For me, junior year homecoming week wasn’t as carefree and fun. I started to realize that time was flying by. I only had one more homecoming week after that year. I felt like we had to make that year count. Not saying we didn’t, but I felt like there could’ve been something more.

So, tonight, as I reminisce about all of my homecoming experiences with the senior class, I realize that this is it. It’s our last time we’re all going to be dressed in purple and representing our class. It’s our last time for homecoming week.

We’ve almost reached the end to our journey of homecoming week after four years of mistakes and lessons learned.

I hope that next year I can reminisce and say “Remember when we gave it our all during homecoming week? That was a great week and I couldn’t have asked for anything better.”

When I thought that I would never miss the stress that came along with preparing for homecoming week, I realize today that I’m actually going to miss it terribly. It’s hard to realize, but it’s even harder to accept.

Homecoming week, you will sincerely be missed!