Senior Reflection: Tyler Meeks – Closing a Chapter

It is still hard to believe that only two years ago, our class received emails proclaiming “Congratulations! You have been accepted to the Carol Martin Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science!”

A new chapter in our life was just beginning. We excitedly told our friends and teachers that they wouldn’t see us much next year; we were going to a new school. At first, that’s all Gatton was to most of us: a new school, albeit one that would afford us opportunities of which we could only dream. We would get to take courses that would challenge us, perform research with amazing WKU professors, Study Abroad in places from England to China. Free college credit, free meals, free housing; it was almost too good to be true. It was only once we actually got there that we learned Gatton was not just a school, but a place where we could truly belong.

The best part of Gatton, as any student will tell you without hesitation, is the community. Although our studies were a big priority, even more important was creating and maintaining our relationships with each other. Between hours of video games, last minute study sessions, and staying up all night with friends to walk to Waffle House as a group in the morning, lasting friendships were created. We bonded through group messages, wing and weekend activities, spending accumulated meal plans on brownies and cheese sticks at Papa Johns; the list goes on and on. Some of my best memories of Gatton are of just sitting in the third floor common area and talking with the people I cared about.

As I sit in my room typing this a full four weeks after graduating, I still have trouble coming to terms with the fact that my time as a high school student is over, that yet another chapter in my life has been closed. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that these last two years have been some of the best of my life, and as our class prepares for the next part of their journey, spreading across the country like data in a scatter plot, there is one thing that I know will remain true.

There will never be another group of people quite like the residents of Florence Schneider Hall.