2016 Senior Essay Finalist: Shannon Kingsley

In a poem about maturation, growth, and seizing opportunity, my favorite poet, Katherine Larson, writes, Metamorphosis will make you ugly. I answer: Radiance will change its name. Metamorphosis — a change, a transformation — occurs as a response to our environment or because of an inner desire or compulsion to transform oneself into something new. Metamorphosis and opportunity prove inextricably linked for one cannot change without the opportunities to transform oneself. In this manner, North Attleboro High School has provided us with the environment for our metamorphosis. 

By the final weeks of senior year, it is tempting to dismiss high school and its conventions as mundane, each day a tedious continuation of the last. We wake up, we go to school, we attend after-school activities, we go home, we complete homework into the wee hours. For the past four years, our lives have been dictated by the alarm clock that sounds at 6:00 a.m. — or, for those like myself who are particularly fond of the snooze button, 6:15 a.m., pushing 6:30 — and the bells in B-flat that ring every forty-nine minutes between classes. Each one of us has experienced the strain of this repetition in recent months as we felt ready to split our cocoons and free ourselves from the confines of high school. 

But I challenge all of you to look beyond the monotony, to forget the drama and negativity that remain inescapable aspects of high school, and to focus instead on the amazing experiences that North Attleboro High School has offered us. I challenge all of you to view these last four years as a blessing, an opportunity to undergo metamorphosis in a safe space supported by incredibly dedicated teachers and surrounded by the friends with whom we have shared the high and lows, the successes and failures, the triumphs and embarrassments.  

At North, we illustrate on a regular basis the ineffable bonds woven in these hallways and classrooms and the incredible ways in which one human being — and sometimes one gesture —impacts the life of another person. Last year, when I befriended a freshman who sat alone at lunchtime, I felt pleased to help a fellow student. Yet, it was she who profoundly affected my life, totally upending my own concept of courage and showing me the power of perseverance.  Last spring, as I precariously carried a box of pea plants through the corridor, the cast-offs of a biology experiment, a boy stopped to ask if he could take one of the plants home to his mother.  “She will just love this,” he said. In one brief exchange, he taught me about kindness. This year, expounding on the life mysteries in Waiting for Godot, Mrs. Andersen showed me how literature represents the stories of ourselves — because without the ability to tell our own stories, we are lost. And recently, when I got dumped two weeks before senior prom, two administrators demonstrated compassion and, equally as important, the benefit of humor in an awkward situation. These represent experiences unique to NAHS. And, as you reflect on your own experiences at North, you no doubt will conclude that our community of students and teachers conveys crucial life lessons beyond the basics of the classroom. We may not all hang out
together outside of school — sometimes we even resist saying hello to each other in the hall —
but we all share this common connection. We also have befriended the same teachers, learned
the nuances of pickle ball, suffered the same discomfort of squeezing into the freshmen pit, and
enjoyed the same endearingly cheesy jokes by Mr. Rizzo during the in-school Holiday Concert.
Of the roughly 3.3 million seniors graduating from the nation’s high schools this year, we, the
NAHS Class of 2016, represent about 280 of these high school seniors, making the bonds of our
metamorphosis very special.

Our eagerness to shed the comforts of high school stems, in part, from the fact that our metamorphosis is complete and we are prepared for the real world. Admittedly, this metamorphosis has not always been pretty. We bombed tests, quarreled with our friends, failed at times to work our hardest at practices, skipped music lessons, doubted ourselves, sometimes doubted each other, learned how much we have yet to learn, struggled to temper our idealistic views. Yet, the way that our metamorphosis ultimately shapes, transforms, and redefines us —broadening our perspectives and altering our perceptions — proves more exceptional than any single ugly event during the process. I answer, writes Larson, Radiance will change its name.  Like the narrator in Larson’s poem who chooses to radiate, we all possess the capacity to live positively and function as positive forces in others’ lives.

So, I challenge all of you to radiate. Be inspired by your metamorphosis at North. Shed high school with a positive outlook. Begin the rest of your life with an excitement for the future.  Be brilliant. Be bold. Be confident. As Katherine Larson writes at her poem’s conclusion, “You haven’t much time — risk it all."