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Tuesday, May. 12, 2009

Carpe diem in your community

In the fall, I will be moving to Atlanta to attend Georgia Tech. I will live in a dorm room with my friend Rachel, and I will be far away from my family.

I will study things that I’m interested in and follow my dreams.

Yet, for some reason, I’ve begun to drag my feet.

My reason is not that my high school experience was unusually fantastic, or that I’m afraid, or even that I feel unprepared.

I am dragging my feet because, as I leave Middle Georgia, I’m seeing all of the ways in which I could have left a mark.

Every day, I feel a slight shock when I realize that there are people I won’t be able to get to know like I had wanted.

There are letters I could have written to the Warner Robins City Council.

There are countless things that would have been easy and fun to do, and I didn’t.

Now, I’m off to make my fortune or whatever it is teenagers do these days, and I’m leaving all of these opportunities behind.

It’s not that I am afraid I will have fewer opportunities in college, but that I seem to have ignored all the opportunities I had here.

They’re small things, sometimes. I’ll tell a friend that we need to hang out some time.

That’s such a common thing to say, but it has now started to carry different weight and urgency.

I may only be 18, but I do know that this stage of my life is quickly coming to an end.

I’ll never be around the same people in the same setting again.

Sometimes, however, the things I should have done weigh more heavily.

There’s political activism I should have, and could have, taken part in, but I didn’t take the time to educate myself.

And that’s where it falls to you, the ones who still live in Middle Georgia.

I may have wasted time and closed my eyes to opportunities, but you still have a chance to (as cliche as it sounds) make a difference.

You can do the small things or the big things, but make sure you do something.

Have ideas and act on them.

Make friends and get to know them.

See a problem and fix it.

As the Chinese proverb said, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.”

This is the last Teen Board page for the 2008-09 school year.

I’m glad this is an opportunity I didn’t skip over.

Amazing things are happening and waiting for you to take part.

Don’t let these opportunities slip by.

Melissa Hyde is a senior at Warner Robins High.