It was a rainy Friday afternoon, and I would have been completely happy to be at home on the couch, digging into a hot plate of nachos and watching the Golf Channel. Yet, at 4:30 p.m. on that September day, I was inside room 233, listening to a teacher who I didn’t have talk about tactics for defeating Nazi Germany. The following Monday afternoon, a sunnier day, was spent in room 126, listening to another teacher I had never taken a class with, as he lectured me about the most effective pathways to conflict resolution. I spent so many of those first high school days in class after school, that by the end of the first quarter freshman year, my parents must have thought I was living at school. They weren’t really wrong, and all though I was still blind to it, the old halls of our high school really did become my second home.

When I reflect upon my time at PMHS, what stands out to me the most is the bonds I made with my teachers throughout the past four years. I fondly reminisce over the combined hundreds of hours spent in our beautiful old building after class ended, hanging back to discuss, debate, and celebrate with my favorite faculty members. That must be the special thing about our school; that all students can have the chance to forge lasting and meaningful relationships with new and different teachers, throughout all four years of learning. While I only was taught by a handful of the PMHS faculty, I don’t think there’s a single teacher or administrator that I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting. Through clubs, sports, and other extracurriculars, no face remained unfamiliar. I think that there’s a certain charm to our school, a unique and intimate nearness that is inherently felt between students and teachers. Perhaps this responsibility falls on the compact class sizes, or the proximity of student lockers to faculty offices, or the shared common areas. Whatever factor is accountable for fostering these relationships, I am eternally grateful to it.

If one thing became clear to me at the close of my senior year, it is that one can never know the last class they’ll sit in, the last debate they’ll have with a teacher, or the last time they’ll walk down our hallowed hallways until they’ve already done so. This, I suppose, is just another fact of life, another point taken from comfort and forsaken to the unknown. What this means is, as corny as it may seem, that it’s truly essential to cherish the time spent in PMHS while you’re in it. Our school is a unique haven for safety, enlightenment, and joy, and I only hope that many students after me will get to share in experiencing just how wonderful Pelham Memorial High School was for me.