By:  Emma Grossman

Westborough High School may look like a prison from the outside, and we may joke that it even feels like a prison on the inside, but the truth is that we are so incredibly lucky to be able to call WHS our home. And that’s what it really is: our home. We spent four years, 724 days, 4,706 hours, 282,360 minutes, and 16,941,600 seconds in this building. We laughed, we cried, we stressed, we rejoiced…but were we ever truly thankful? WHS has graced us with so many opportunities and resources that other schools could only dream of having, yet we took them for granted. So it is now that I would like to say my final thank you to Westborough High for providing me with the best high school experience I could have possibly asked for.

When I hear my peers say they can’t wait to get out of this school and get to college, I can’t help but feel a pang deep in my heart. I know that we are all ready, in one way or another, to move onto the next chapters of our lives -which will be filled with amazing new journeys and memories- but we can’t be so quick as to forget all the memories we made here. These are the halls that we aimlessly wandered through when we signed out of class to go to the “bathroom.”  These classrooms are ones in which we laughed until we cried and cried until we laughed. These are the teachers who never gave up on us. These are the friends, classmates, and peers that made coming to school everyday worthwhile. Whether you would like to admit it or not, WHS is a part of you:  the students, this building, the sports teams, the musicals, the teachers…they all helped make us into what we are today. The past four years have been a period of incredible transformation for each and every one of us, and hopefully we will continue to mature and grow even more in the near future, but without WHS we would not be where we are now.

Westborough is one of the best school districts in the state, and that is mainly due to our amazing teachers that we are so lucky to have here at WHS and across all of the schools in town. Although it may seem as if they were being “mean” and giving way too much homework, they really just want what is best for us, and they were just pushing us to become stronger versions of ourselves. Like most everyone, I have had teachers that I did not personally enjoy, but I also was fortunate enough to have teachers that were nothing but good to me for the past four years. Specifically, I would like to thank Mrs. Stoker. When I started out in the journalism program as a measly, awkward, scared little freshman, I had no idea what could be regarding both my journalism career and of myself as a person. Mrs. Stoker helped to pull me out of my shell in that Journalism I class, and she continued to push me to be my best self and a better reporter in Journalism II, and then again last year when I was one of the editors for the paper as a junior. And now, as the Co-Editor in Chief of The Lobby Observer, I can look back and without a doubt say that she has drastically changed not only my high school experience, but my outlook on life as well. Always seen with a smile on her face, Mrs. Stoker makes me want to become a better person each and every day, and I will forever be grateful to her for that. So here’s to you, Mrs. Stoker-I will try to broadcast happiness everyday in your honor.

After four years full of stress, happiness, anxiety, joy, and an entire range of emotions that I can’t even begin to explain, it is finally 2017’s turn; we’ve paid our dues, we’ve done our time, and now it is time to leave this place and all that it holds, but the memories (both good and bad) will remain for a lifetime.

So now, it is with a full heart and teary eyes that I bid a final farewell to Westborough High School and the journalism program that shaped me into the person that I am today. Thank you for everything, WHS, it’s been one hell of a ride.