The Friends I'll Miss Forever
By Stella Goss
“Life moves pretty fast; if you don’t stop and look around every once in a while, you could miss it,” is a quote that everybody knows, whether you’ve seen the movie or not.
When I watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off many years ago, I had no appreciation for this line. Now, as an eighth-grader looking back on the last nine years, I wish I had taken that advice.
It seems like only yesterday that I had been playing with the hot wheels cars next to the Level One classroom. I’ve grown so much, and I expected to feel proud about how far I’d come since my first day of kindergarten, but instead, I felt sad. The last nine years had been such an incredible period of childhood, from the people I met, to the things I learned, and the friends I made along the way, all wrapped up in this perfect little bubble of Synapse.
It was the end of seventh grade when I started seriously thinking about boarding school. It seemed like a dream at the time, my very own Hogwarts. But as the summer went on and I started high school applications, the downside started to hit me. I would be leaving my family, and not only my blood family, but the friends I had grown up with. I started to think about each of my friends: each memory, each moment I spent with them. It’s amazing how much one can remember the little moments with close friends but cannot remember what they ate for breakfast.
One moment I remember vividly took place when I was in Level 2, about 6 or 7 years old. I was playing soccer with my classmates, goalkeeper specifically, although, at the time, goalkeeper was less of a position and more of a,“You-- go stand over there.”
I wasn’t a particularly skilled player, and my attempts at blocking shots mostly consisted of sticking out my limbs and hoping the ball would hit me. Not the best tactic. As one of the more experienced players wound up to take a shot, I tried to take up as much of the goal as possible. It hit me in the stomach and deflected. My stomach hurt, but my face lit up with excitement. The ball bounced away on the bright green turf, and someone ran to retrieve it. I was so proud of my save, despite the success being mostly luck. I want to do that again! I thought. I continued to play goalkeeper at recess, albeit my saves few and far between. Seven years down the line, I play goalkeeper on a competitive team. I can’t pinpoint my current success to that moment, but I credit my friends for teaching me the game. This was just the beginning of the incredible memories I made here at Synapse.
Another prominent memory from that time was the “dancing newspaper” promotion for Level 2’s Interactive Lab newspaper station. Tinker time was the best time of the day; I looked forward to it all week, and so did many of my classmates. As Interactive Lab drew closer, it also became a way for my classmates and I to relieve stress. At the time, we were finishing our newspaper reports on teachers, and my friend and I decided that our newspaper stand needed some pizazz. We gathered all the paper in the room and got to work, taping and gluing a life-size newspaper costume. When it was finished, we covered it in words and scribbles. Then it was time for the runway. My friend put the costume on and a jingle was composed. It was at this moment that our dancing newspaper was born.
Tinker time wasn’t all fun and games, though. It was also a time for business. Starting around age eight, I acquired a taste for all things entrepreneurial, beginning with Sendvelope, an intraclass mail delivery service operated during tinker time. As my business grew (as much as a tinker time business can) I began recruiting my classmates. It started with my friends, but as the word got around, everybody wanted in on the action, helping to create envelopes and deliver mail to other students. By the end of the year, Sendvelope had become a past endeavor, but it would be the start of many more business pursuits in my time at Synapse.
Two years later, fourth grade was also full of both social and academic achievements and memories. It was the year of Fort, a chaotic but fun government simulation. I wasn’t the president, but I found my own ways to lead our cardboard town. I helped build houses and town buildings, I repaired the rips and tears, and I opened a small grocery stand. One of my fondest memories of Fort was the house I built and shared with my friend. We spent time making windows, decorating the inside, and adding flower boxes to the outside. It was a square, mostly brown little building, but the colorful flowers and curtains gave a nice accent. Our windows weren’t much, four squares cut out to make a four-paneled window, but the small details like windows were really what made it feel homey. When our town decided to elect a judge, I ran against my friend. After I emerged victorious, he took a gracious defeat and congratulated me. It amazed me: most of my friends at the time would have stomped off, but he didn’t. He’s a true friend, and we remain close to this day.
It was also that year that I finally started a newspaper, an idea I had been working on for years. The Weekly Synapser printed its first copy on November 28, 2017. Many editions followed, even earning an honorable mention by the Head of School. I never realized the impact of my newspaper until recently, when a student in fourth grade approached me, announcing that she too wanted to start a fourth grade newspaper, following in the footsteps I had created many years prior. I am proud of many of my achievements, but knowing the influence I had on that young student made me prouder than ever.
My fourth grade year was more similar to the present than any other year; we were the big kids of elementary school, academics got more serious, and we were preparing to move on to middle school. It was nearly four years ago that I stood on that stage, receiving my certificate for finishing elementary school. It, of course, was not as big as the concurrent eighth grade graduation, but to us, as fourth graders, it felt like we had just conquered the world. Now as I prepare to graduate from middle school in the spring, it feels a little like deja vu, but this time, my friends won’t be with me in the next chapter of my life.
As we wrapped up our first year of middle school, we set out on our first Spring Expedition, a trip we had been dreaming about for years. It was a week of running around LA with my friends: visiting famous museums, hiking Griffith Observatory’s trails, and ending the days calling each other on the hotel phones. I didn’t end up in the same room as my friends at the time; in fact, I ended up with people I didn’t particularly get along with. Over the course of the trip, we became more tolerant of each other. In the last two years, my relationships with these people have had highs and lows, but they are now some of my closest friends.
At the end of seventh grade, we were able to take modified expeditions, adjusted to be COVID safe. It was three days in a van with my friends: bouldering in Berkeley, singing shanties at the Port of Oakland, and jamming to our collaborative playlist. Every moment was worth it, (even falling off of rocks, getting sand in my shoes, and walking miles uphill) because every moment I was surrounded by my friends, who were keeping me on my feet.
We ended the second day bouldering in Berkeley, scrambling up the shady side of the rock until the sun hit our faces and we gazed out over the Bay Area.
“Wow,” I said. “This is amazing.”
“You can see everything from up here,” my friend Meera replied, barefoot on the sunny stone. We soon descended the rock to take another path to the highest point, convinced it would be even better from there. I began to climb, and my friend followed me. We quickly reached a difficult spot, and Meera was having trouble building the confidence to make the jump.
“You can do it. Just put your right foot here and your left foot there and grab my hand,” I said. “I’m here if anything happens.”
“Ok. Ok,” she responded, still unconvinced she could do it.
“Trust me.”
She took a breath and jumped, grabbing my hand and steadying herself on the rock. It was a simple step to the top from there. We made it, all the way to the top. We made it because I believed in her and she trusted me. That connection made the view ten times better, and it was the perfect way to end our day.
Being the second-to-last week of school, everyone was excited for summer. But as we returned the next day from our last day of expeditions, reality hit me. I would only have one more year with my friends. For the last nine years, these had been the people I knew always had my back.
210 days from today, we will graduate and go our separate ways. And I will be proud of all of us for how far we have come since that first day of kindergarten nearly a decade ago. But mostly, I will miss them. I will miss the smiles and fist bumps in the hallways. I will miss the conversations in between classes. I will miss seeing the people I grew up with every day. I will miss my friends family.
