Truthfully, I am not sure I feel sad about waving goodbye to Rock Ridge or even The Blaze… yet. I feel sad about leaving the people who helped me find belonging here. 

I am not saying goodbye to an Era because Rock Ridge didn’t feel like my Era. 

The past four years have been an exhausting mix of measuring myself on other people’s scales, struggling to find my voice, and writing ten different versions for assignments like this one, because I cared too much about how my peers perceived me. I asked myself the questions “Who am I?” and “Where do I belong?” far more often than I wondered “When are grades going to be released?” and “Should I retake the SAT to improve my score?” 

 Figuring out where I belong has been the theme of my high school years, accompanying me since freshman year. Over four years at Rock Ridge, I have explored diverse environments in hopes of finding the place where my puzzle piece fits. 

I thought I could find a sense of belonging by joining a community, so I became a RRPA theater kid, and then I left again. I thought belonging was a reward one receives for pushing themselves outside of their comfort zone, so I crafted a hot-pink crown with the words “Support The Blaze, Buy Candy!” and advertised The Blaze to my classmates. I thought belonging grows in places of kindness, so I became a part of PEER. 

The puzzle piece never really seemed to fit. I often felt like I had to change something about myself or laugh along at an inside joke I didn’t understand in order to fit into these environments. Sometimes, I felt so fake. 

Eventually, I found belonging in the most unexpected moments, on my last day of high school. It was when Madame Billington organized a crêpe party with her French 5 class to say goodbye to me… when I received a text from someone that I thought didn’t care, asking me to sign his yearbook… when I got a handcrafted “PEER Senior 2025” sash hung around my neck… when I had the best senior prom because a group of girls included me as one of them even though I was only their friend’s older sister… when I read the signature pages of my senior yearbook… That’s when I realized I had found belonging a long time ago. 

I loved every A-day just to come to Newspaper, and looked forward to every PEER class on B-days – because of the people I was with. 

It was all those moments of walking down the hallway and hearing someone say “Hi Melissa!” with the most genuine smile, or receiving a connecting letter filled with care and beautiful handwriting from Sitwat. It was enjoying the familiar stress of deciphering another story that would turn into a 1000+ word article with Sanvi, and bonding with Rachel about knowing exactly where to place the perfect b-roll footage in the final product. That is what belonging means to me. 

Newspaper has helped me grow into a bolder version of myself and allowed me to explore video production and investigative journalism with passion. Being a reporter for The Blaze was my description tag; I felt proud to identify with Newspaper. I also felt pressure to be perfect, to produce excellent writing and to be a great leader in this classroom – Newspaper was both the most stressful and most meaningful thing I experienced in high school. 

As I am signing off in EB Garamond, I notice that I didn’t find the belonging I came here to find; I found an identity. My experience in Newspaper wasn’t defined by staying in room 1400, but in the confidence to leave this room, connect to the community at Rock Ridge, and find myself.