The approach of May 19, graduation day, has caused a wave of nostalgia and a senior has no choice but to measure the experiences, adventures, failures and multiple successes of high school.

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away."

This class motto of Cibola High School's graduating class serves as a reminder to us all that it is the small moments, the memories like making that first of many campaign speeches in front of 700 peers and pushing and questioning the policies and motivations of a typically sympathetic administration. Memories that pierce the heart and evoke emotions in even the most hardhearted of people.

Graduating from Cibola means graduating with confidence; graduating from Cibola means graduating with an appreciation for learning and a respect for teachers who truly put their lives and souls into their craft; graduating from Cibola means graduating from one of the best English departments in the city; it means graduating with self-respect and an overwhelming admiration for personal space that one obtains after being crammed into a building with 2,800 other smelly teenagers.

A high school experience would be no real experience if it weren't for all the "extra stuff." Clubs, sports, clubs and more clubs - that's what high school is about. There is no better feeling than working and fighting and forcing a project to fruition.

Club members form families, and it is these families that mold high school kids into the bright, thinking, capable adults that are supposed to join the "real world" we hear so much about.

Sitting in The Pit, surrounded by over 620 other graduates, is an overwhelming, frightening idea. It is nice to be able to reflect upon four great years and know that as an individual, (not just another digit in Cibola's largest graduating class ever), a personal dent has been left, no matter how minuscule it may be.

Praise never gets old, especially when it stems from the adults and mentors whom students, every day, attempt to imitate and impress and live up to.

For some, high school is the best four years of life. For others, it is the worst. Regardless of how it will be remembered, the memories are forever. The memories are pages in the story that everyone writes in their lifetime.

The senior class song "Photograph," by Nickelback, presents the idea of remembering those random, crazy escapades and saying goodbye to the memories while moving on to a better, exciting future.

On May 19, many will stop and smell the lilies (2006's class flower), and know that it was all for a reason.

The graduating seniors, some of the most random crazy, intelligent people anyone could ever come across, will make that transition and walk that line into adulthood, and know that the time spent slaving over homework and the time spent skipping class and the time spent resisting an education and the time spent growing up, was time very well spent.