Recently during my fourth hour TA in the guidance office, Mrs. Schmidtberger was looking at our old files from meetings throughout the past four years. She read everyone the notes she had taken as the timer blinked that we had a mere 36 days left in the background. She finally opened up my file: “Kate Moores wants to go far away for college, likes to read and write and is thinking about doing journalism in the future.”
Four years later, I am writing my goodbye letter for the school paper, about to transition to Mizzou’s paper, the Columbia Missourian. Despite the years and changes high school has presented me with, I returned to what my freshman year self had felt was right.
Back then, the guidance office was intimidating to my underclassman self. I only went to occasionally discuss the broad future, something I had never put much thought into. A few years after that first meeting, I had another one, and college was closer on the horizon than it had ever been. I was told how to prepare for the ACT, and that I needed to begin forming a resume for the schools I wanted to apply to.
I then headed to faith family with my now teacher Mrs. McCambridge, where I told her that I wanted to join the school paper. My experience? A journalism class sophomore year that I hated (sorry Mrs. M.) And now I was going to be a staff writer for my senior year.
All it took was four issues of the Miegan to convince me that this was right. Like my freshman year self predicted, writing is for me and so is journalism. While I may be staying in-state (young Kate would’ve hated that one), I know that the future doesn’t feel so blank anymore. Sitting in guidance today, working on this column while “33 days left” now blinks behind me, I finally feel good about my future. It just took a reminder of what the past was like.