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The Post Where I Divulge a Little Bit Too Much About Orem High School May 26, 2010

Posted by Emily in : Memory Lane, Photography, School, Thoughts, Utah , 6comments

My high school is going to be razed next week.  The new high school has been under construction for a few years and will be completed shortly.  A parking lot will be made where the old school sits, and the new school was built in the old school’s parking lot.

I am one of the few people (so I’m told) that loved high school and I find myself very nostalgic at the moment.

I drove by Orem High today to take some pictures before it was destroyed and I was too late!  The school’s name was already taken off the building! (Do you see the snow capped mountains?  They are compliments of the Monday’s storm.)  Today was the last day this building functioned as a school.

I happened to go to my old high school right as school was letting out . . . not something I suggest when carrying a bunch of camera gear.  I ran into my niece Betsy (who graduates on Friday) and my nephew Jake in the halls.  They were pretty surprised to see me wandering about!

Each year, the graduating class would nominate people for “Superlatives.”  I had forgotten I was nominated, and found it interesting and funny that I was voted “Most Photogenic.”  Yes, there was a time when I LOVED to be in front of the camera, that was about 10 years and 20 pounds ago.  Now, I just like to be behind the camera.  Maybe the category, “Most Likely to Become a Photographer” would have been more appropriate.  :)

I posted some of these pictures on facebook and it seems like everyone is a bit nostalgic!  Poor us . . . all of our memories will have to remain in our minds.  Our homecoming King from the class of 1996 (Andy Payne for anyone who knows/cares) messaged me after seeing these pics and told me I made a great Homecoming Queen.  I was all, um . . . what exactly made me great?  They way I accepted and wore my tiara?  Not a lot of duties (meaning NONE) if I remember correctly . . .

I saw this chart outside of the counselor’s office and it stopped me short.  I mean, 27 credits to graduate from high school?  Seriously?  Only 27 credits?  Doesn’t that seem like, not enough?  Gosh.  Four years to complete it too.  That is an average of six credits per semester.  No wonder I thought high school was easy.  To put it in perspective, medical school is an average of 31 credits per semester and there are no lame-o-filler-classes with that.  I’m just sayin’!

As I walked through the school, I couldn’t think of one teacher that I really remembered or who had influenced me . . . most of my memories were of my friends and in the cafeteria, which was renovated a few years ago.  I did however, drop into one classroom where I recognized the teacher’s name, Mr. Ashdown.  He was my driver’s ed teacher and had absolutely no recollection of me.  When I told him I was in his class in 1993, a girl sitting in a desk overheard me and said, “Hey!  I was born in 1993!”

Yes.  she just said that.  In that moment, I knew I had been in denial about aging.  Seriously, how can you deny your age when current high school kids were born the year you attended high school, and the actual school itself is going to be torn down because it is is SO OLD?

I must not deny it anymore.  I am aging.  I have wrinkles and some sun spots.

Heaven help me.

Wait, I think I just need a dermatologist to help me get back into the denial stage.

Yes.  I think I like being in denial.