I speak on behalf of the Senior Class.

With age comes experience. With experience comes maturity. With maturity comes entitlement, and when that entitlement is ignored by underclassmen, Seniors get upset. As our new class of 2016 seniors have gotten used to being the top dogs at Air Academy, we’ve realized why the seniors before us acted the way they did toward all underclassmen.

To fully understand our spite, I must first address the reason for the problem.  Seniors have unspoken rights. If these rights are in any way violated, the honor and respect that should walk hand-in-hand with our seniority is belittled.  This is no light matter.  We have worked twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, through three torturous years of high school to get where we are now.  By under appreciating that commendable accomplishment with disregard to the entitlement that we deserve, Freshmen, Sophomores, and –most commonly and presently– Juniors offend their superiors.  

Granted, in high school, many core classes have a healthy conglomeration of two, sometimes even three, grade levels.  But even so, the Sophomore in an almost exclusively Senior calculus class should have even more respect for his or her upperclassmen in this instance.  I fell victim to this fault last year in my AP Biology class, where I was one of four Juniors while the rest of the students were Seniors.  I felt the pressure to fit in with those older students, and live up to their experience; when in reality, there was no reason for me to do so.  It didn’t matter that we were in the same class.  There is, and should always be, a clear dividing line between the two groups, even in the midst of a beneficial mesh of two age groups.

What exactly are the lowerclassmen doing wrong, you ask?  It’s subtle.  Sometimes even undetectable.  Yet the atmosphere of their disregard for the unspoken rules is tangible and stinging.  

Juniors, and especially those Sophomores who just got their licenses and feel on top of the world at age 16, do not have the right to park in the Senior parking lot.  Personally, the invasion of underclassmen in this lot does not affect me– because honestly parking in there has no purpose if you’re not an athlete who stays after school anyway; it’s just a traffic jam trap from 2:47-3:10.  However, I know many who are adversely affected by this infestation.  Voicing the pleas of help from those Seniors stuck in the after-school traffic rush behind an underclassman who felt it was okay to park where they shouldn’t, I ask you to please, show some class.

Though many upperclassmen go off campus for lunch, those who stay at school often find themselves with no lunch tables left to sit at in the courtyard.  Juniors and Seniors deserve to sit on the benches.  Sorry, Freshmen and Sophomores, I promise the ground is just as uncomfortable as it looks.  But the tables and blocks in the courtyard should go to your elders.

I get it.  The moment you aren’t a Freshman anymore is one of the most memorable, relieving breaths you’ll ever take.  It is an unforgettable feeling, watching that new class of fresh fish walk into the gym on the first day of school and fill the section of bleachers that are the final resting place of your freshman soul.  I saw it happen on the very first day of this school year.  Two newly Sophomore boys pointed to their younger friend, and called him out with a “Ohh, Freshman!” I felt it too, both as a Sophomore and a Junior.  But I speak from experience when I say that neither experience compares to the feeling of being the top of the top.  

I sometimes find it hard to picture myself and my fellow Seniors as old as I saw the Senior class of 2012, when we were freshmen.  It’s strange to think Freshmen look up to us as the oldest group.  At the same time though, it’s thrilling.  Sure, we may get upset when Juniors park in our spots, or when we have to eat lunch elsewhere or on the ground for lack of courtyard tables; but in all reality, our one true entitlement cannot and will not be taken from us.  The ultimate prize for enduring the unimaginable workload and pressure of Junior year, pushing through to seniority, leaves us with one right that, spoken or unspoken, reminds us every day that we’ve almost made it.  Pride.  

It’s great to be a Senior.