2018.

A year filled with memories.

Memories that will hold a special place in our hearts.

And with them embedded there, we welcome 2019.

By Dec. 31 students will have wholeheartedly turned their brains to vacation mode, relishing the well-deserved break from the constant chaos of school.

Surrounded by friends and family, students are preparing to throw a party, with Time Square displayed on every TV lighting up the room.

Banners and streamers from Party City hanging on every wall. A colorful variety of 2019 glasses ready to put on and party horns ready to blow the second the clock ticks twelve.

We look at all the videos online about the top 10 events of this year and greet them with a familiar “Oh, that was this year?” We relive our memories wanting to go back to them and experience those moments again or make the changes to times that made us cringe in retrospect. We desperately want to go back, but at the same time we remain anxious to see what the new year has in store.

The suspension of what will happen in 2019 grows on us and we think about we should do and what we want to accomplish. Everything seems impossible but we all justify it with the fact that we have plenty of time.

However, nobody can deny that 2018 was a big year.

The world watched as South Korea hosted the  23rd Winter Olympics, as France took the win at the FIFA World Cup 2018 hosted in Moscow, as Prince Harry married Meghan Markle at Windsor Castle, and as Trump gave his first State of Union.

Our school and community also underwent many significant changes, even if none of them made the front page of the New York Times. In June, we said goodbye to our class of 2018 and wished them good luck in their college endeavours. In August we welcomed our new seniors and first-time freshmen. In between, some of us turned 16 and finally hit the roads of Lucas; others turned 18 and cast their first ballots. We also got a frozen yogurt machine in the cafeteria and finally convinced the district to give us half days during exams week.

But not everything changed in 2018. We are all still eagerly awaiting the completion of the Stacy Road construction.

For most adults a year is just another 365 days that passes, another birthday and another year added to the ones already accumulated. But for teenagers, a year changes a lot. Like the transition from asking your parents to be your chauffeur to finally being able to hit the gas yourself. It could be the beginning of a new relationship and also the experience of the first heartbreak.

A year seems like a monumental amount of time that doesn’t pass by fast enough at first for most teens, but gains speed as it comes to an end and we realize all we’ve done and how much more we could have accomplished.

Hopefully, many of us can come to the conclusion that we gave 2018 our all and left our mark.

Now we can finally celebrate.

We can watch the ball drop in Times Square. We can imagine the glory of a completed Stacy Road.

A new year symbolizes new opportunities, new resolutions, and a clean slate to accomplish them all.

2019, here we come.