Dear Parker, 

I feel the need to say thank you. My grade seems to have a love-hate relationship with you, but I can honestly say that in the end, you did more for me than I probably ever did for you. You taught me to strive for greatness and to just laugh or smile when I don’t know what’s actually going on. You taught me to be kind when it counts and to be passive-aggressive when I want something really bad, and you taught me to always keep going — no matter what sort of obstacle lies ahead of me. Time and time again Parker has given me phenomenal opportunities and advantages to help me be a better, smarter human, and it’s helped me to meet some of the best people on the face of this planet. 

I’m acutely aware that when the incoming freshman graduate, all memory that I ever went here will most likely be promptly forgotten. Sure, I have a tile on the wall, but I heard the other day that you only last as long as the people who remember you do, and that sort of scared me. I had this 12-hour freak out about how I’ve been here for six years, and it might not have mattered at all. That I was one of the thousands of people who had graduated from Parker around the globe, and that I myself couldn’t really name most of the graduating class of 2018, so who was I to judge? Then the thought occurred to me that literally, every single person who has ever graduated here has probably had the same exact thought. This sort of put things in perspective. To hope to be remembered is to ask a gargantuan favor of the world around you. Better to make your time count and have fun doing it. So what if someone in my class sees my yearbook photo in ten years and is like, “hey, look it’s that kid who did musicals and wore a jacket everywhere.” The musicals are some of the best things I’ve ever spent time on, and jackets are cool. Or at least, I like them. Shut up. 

Anyways, I’ve been thinking a lot about time lately. Time is odd because it’s pretty much the only thing that’s been going forever, and isn’t going to stop anytime soon. Often, I find this concept frustrating. I read my letter to myself from the freshman retreat the other day — I wrote a list of things that would help me remember my life if I got amnesia. The concept is fairly stupid, so do me a favor and don’t put too much thought into it. All of the things I wrote down were random little tidbits from my day, not a single thing about my life as a whole or my friends or my family — just 15 different things I had experienced on that exact day. All before 10 a.m.. That’s not even halfway through the day. I’ve probably made a million different little moments since then. Millions of things that might help me remember who I am. Millions of things and millions of people all swirling around in my head all at the same time and all of them make up a little part of me. You see, time frustrates me because each of these moments only happens once and then it’s  over. It makes me want to grab time by the collar and scream in its face to stop or to go faster or to go back so I can relive the good things and maybe skip past the bad ones, but then what would life be but the past and all we ever have is the future. We, as a people, spend so much of our lives scraping for the past that sometimes we forget to live in the moment. 

I have to say thank you to Parker because so many memories were created here, whether it was learning something, meeting someone new, Parker helped to open doorways for me – and for that, I must say thank you. Every day and every night, there are people laughing and dancing and crying and dying and smiling and drinking and dreaming and looking out on the beach at the horizon and wondering what’s next and all of it happens within seconds and the only words there are to describe all of that are terrible and beautiful. 

Thanks for reading, anyone that stuck this far. So as a farewell, I will now quote a book I like:

“We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet see from another’s vantage point, as if new, it may still take our breath away.”

-Dr. Manhattan 

Thanks for reading, and see you all later, 

Spencer O’Brien