The Collegian

Issue date: 10/17/06 Section: News

It must be spreading: the theory that people in this office are starting to feel old. It's happening to me as well. My experience happened this past weekend when I returned to my old high school to proctor the Standard Aptitude Test; for the layman, the SATs.

I was a hall proctor so, basically, I was an overpaid hall monitor. I went around from room to room checking attendance numbers, giving bathroom breaks, and other breaks to the room proctors that just needed to get away from the quiet and the little kids.

While giving those people breaks, it was my realization of how old I had become. Well, not how old I had become but of how quickly the kids in the lower grades had grown up. The kids taking the SATs were the kids that were freshmen when I was a senior in high school. It's hard to believe that those little kids could grow up so quickly, but then I remember that my niece is a senior in high school.

My niece is nearly into college. When did she get into high school? I thought she would perpetually be eight years old.

It's not just that realization; it's the fact that the kids in those SAT rooms look like they should still be in middle school. How do these kids seem not to age? Can they defy the laws of physics? Botox for kids? Maybe. Or maybe I'm just becoming old.

I am starting to notice the difference between college and high school students and really see that those years are long behind me. After two-plus years in college, you would think that I would notice that. No such luck.

Every time I walk into the halls of my old high school, I get this sense of nostalgia and longing for those days of lunch line food and lunch time basketball and mingling with my friends.

It's hard to imagine that it has been two-plus years since I donned the halls of my high school alma mater. It's hard to imagine that I have a little more than a year in college left before I step out into the real world. Although, I know the seniors here, have less than a year for that and many of them don't want to think about it.

Seeing all those young faces at the SATs who are looking to do well to get into the right college because they want out of their high school, but what they don't realize is that high school and college years are the best years of anybody's life. You are semi-independent and your parents are still there for you.

They are just starting on what I have already gone through but because I was there for one of the steps of their development, it makes me proud. I don't know why. It just does.

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