Amanda Johnson and Alex Budka, Staff Writers
As our senior year crosses over the halfway point, we have decided to look back and see what has changed over the past four school years. Besides having the right to use “SENIORS” as an excuse for nearly anything (although, unfortunately, this is not always valid), we have experienced significant changes.
These changes vary from switching from First Class to Google Classroom (only 90’s kids remember First Class) to huge new trends in pop culture that carried over to our own school. Freshmen year, you could catch us in the halls with ombre hair, aggressively high high-waisted shorts paired with a crop top from Forever 21 while simultaneously doing the Harlem Shake. Now you can catch us fixing our highlight in over the knee boots while jamming to Migos.
In all seriousness, the changes we’ve experienced are pretty cool. For example, we didn’t have iPads for the entire first marking period of Freshman year. Once we got the iPads, we didn’t have Google drive, which meant no shared docs, slides, or sheets. I can’t believe I spent freshmen year emailing powerpoints back and forth between my group members for projects and submitting the final product on the “blog”. Now, Google allows us to collaborate on group projects and papers at the same time, just as we did for this article; while Amanda was home in Berkeley Heights and Alex was 7.5 miles high in the air on the way to Florida, we were able to type on our shared Google Doc at the same time and create this article.
Other technology besides just iPads has come a long way as well. Freshman year, I still had a slide phone, but (luckily) since, I have made the transition to an iPhone. Now, it would be more surprising to see a student using a slide phone than it would to ask Mr. Rutzler a question he doesn’t know the answer to.
In the past 4 years, we have also had three Vice Principals, one of whom is now the Principal. There have also been some significant changes in sports. Freshmen year, GL had a bowling team (RIP). However, with this loss came a new team, girls volleyball, which has been wildly successful.
All in all, these past four years of high school have been full of changes – some good, some not so good. But in the end, we went through these changes together. We’ve shared losses and victories, laughed together and cried together, and somehow, in the midst of all this change, we became seniors.
The Highlander 