Seniors & Ex-Seniors

By Lee Yee Tan

The start of the second semester always gives off a weird feeling: it feels like a new school year with the appearance of a dozen new faces, but at the same time, it also repeats a familiar cycle that students have progressed through in semester one. However, returning to school as a senior this semester felt especially sentimental.

The sensation of being a senior is more than just wearing light blue shirts now that it is officially the second semester of the 23-24 school year. “Coming back from break, it feels different as the realization that the start of semester two now means we are much closer to our graduation,” exclaims Jonathan Park, Class of 2024, a current senior. In the midst of juggling school and college applications, the class also has approximately five more months until having to part ways, moving into another milestone in our lives.

It felt as if we were still in middle school yesterday, admiring the upperclassmen, hoping that we could be like them one day. The term ‘graduation’ had never felt so near, yet so far. Fighting off senioritis, we often yearn for that day to arrive faster; however, we also struggle with the goodbyes of our dearest peers. 

Do we really have to say goodbye as if we will never see each other again? I don’t believe so. For the past Christmas break and the first few days of school, a resurgence of ‘Dalat faces’ have been summoned to the Dalat campus. 

Yebeen Kil, Class of 2021, remarks that visiting campus “felt very nostalgic and peaceful and it was nice meeting all my friends and catching up with them after so long.” 

Seeing the familiar faces and our ‘seniors’  we used to look up to felt like we time-traveled a few years back when they were still easily seen on campus.

The visits back were significant even for the alumni. “It’s good to be back, to see the new construction and to see some of the impacts our class made that has carried on. It’s nice to see familiar faces but also nice to see some changes too,” commented Adam Lim, Class of 2023. 

I believe these recurrences had culminated the hard goodbyes in our minds into anticipation that we, as seniors, can and will have a chance to meet again in the future. 

Although the beginning of the semester has just arrived, it will be in the blink of an eye that time will fly by. By then, it would be time for us to put on a graduation cap, ready to progress into another phase of our lives.