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By Claire Reinthaler
For the Clemmons Courier

We’ve made it. 

The 2022-23 school year has finally come to a close, and I’m not sure about my fellow Titans, but I’m sure about this: I learned a lot this year. Not just academically but about myself and what and who I value. 

Everyone says junior year is the hardest of the four, and I’m not going to lie. It pushed me almost to my breaking point multiple times. Whether it was a book for my AP English class that I had to stay up with all night or the day that I realized no more than three minutes before a big AP environmental science test that I had studied the wrong unit, the lows for me this year were, well, very low. 

There were times when it would have been very easy to admit defeat, very easy just to take the bad grade and stop caring so much. I’ve always been told I care too much.

It’s caring too much that made this year’s highs so great. Getting a 95 on my very first synthesis paper in AP language; writing and producing a play of our own creation in theatre; singing on the bus on the way back from chorus trips; starting to draft my first novel; having a successful year as features editor of the Zephyr and getting promoted to co-editor in chief for next year; laughing until my face hurt more times than I can count with people who I’ve truly come to love — these are the reasons why there is no such thing as caring too much.

In a way, I simply cannot fathom that I’m entering my last year at West Forsyth. I still feel like there’s so much more that I want to do, so many more goals that I want to achieve, and one tiny year seems like too small a time frame to contain all my lofty aspirations. 

In another way, I know that I’m ready and that this coming year is not the end but simply the first step in reaching for the stars.

In the meantime, I’m ready to make the most of senior season. I’m ready to go to every cheesy event and take every meaningless selfie and savor every fleeting moment, so I can look back a year from now and say, “I took nothing for granted. I lived every moment. I made it.”

Claire Reinthaler is this year’s Titan Tattler.