The past four years of my life have flown by and it is hard to comprehend the fact that my high school career is slowly coming to an end in less than a week. Freedom has offered myself and others so many opportunities to strive and excel as graduation day comes closer into focus, I can’t be more grateful for this time spent here. From various clubs and activities I participated in to the fun and challenging classes that were ultimately rewarding in the end, Freedom is a unique school that is constantly overlooked by its students. For me, it took until the last few weeks of my high school career to finally have this realization.
My father, aunts (along with their spouses) and grandparents graduated from Freedom. You could say it has become a small tradition to graduate from this high school. Many Freedom students could say the same for their families, which is something I find so unique to the area.
At the end of my freshman year, Mrs. Andrea Niedbala handed me a letter addressed to me, explaining that, due to my hard work and commitment during the past school year, I should consider joining a class called Print Media Workshop (PMW). The bottom of the letter was signed by no other than Mr. Aaron Fitzpatrick, the advisor of the class/club. My initial reaction was that I was not going to join the class as I wanted to focus on my very heavy schedule for the next school year. But after many pleas from Mrs. Niedbala to join, I switched around my schedule to accommodate for the class.
Now, three years later, I don’t know why it took me so long to make the decision because it ultimately changed my life. The countless after-school hours that I spent devoted to working on either the newspaper, yearbook or creating a commercial to promote both publications all contribute to the best experience that I could have possibly imagined. But the great time came at two expenses: hard work and commitment.
During the summer between my sophomore and junior years, I spent an entire week alongside Mr. Fitzpatrick and Michelle Keith, the Editor-in-Chief of her senior yearbook, in Gettysburg, PA at GYE (Gettysburg Yearbook Experience) where we worked on forming a theme for the 2014-2015 edition of the Shawnee. This week changed how our entire yearbook would ultimately be designed and created, a change that would translate into teaching our peers of how we wanted this book to appear. It took time to adapt to the change, but in the end we sold more yearbooks than we had ever before.
My senior year rolled around and I took on the position as Editor-in-Chief of the yearbook. Almost every day after school I spent devoted to working on the yearbook. Alongside with my managing editor, Junior Joey Pail, the yearbook was submitted on March 18, 2016 at 11:59:40 p.m., just a mere twenty seconds before it was due to our publishing company. That day proved to be one that I will forever remember as D-Day, the deadline day. From all of the help I received that year, from those in the Print Media class to Mr. Fitzpatrick and my parents, I could not be more thankful to be surrounded by some of the most hardworking and committed people I have ever known.
But, now that my time at Freedom has dwindled down to an end, I reflect on all of these memories as I prepare to walk across the stage to accept my diploma. My future plans do not include physically staying close to home, as I’ll be attending Penn State Behrend in Erie to have a degree in marketing, but my heart will always stay close to home.