Normally people being mistaken for food isn’t much a problem here, but the idea of being friends is something that has become somewhat of an urban legend in the midst of our competitive corner of the world. I, for one, was never too fond of mindless chatter for the first three years of my high school career, primarily because I always wondered how much math homework I could have finished while entertaining the talking diva sitting across from me.

It took fourteen hours on a red-eye flight from NYC, arriving at an equally ungodly hour in Beijing, China to change that perspective. Actually, it wasn’t as much the plane flight as it was being stuck in an Inner Mongolian desert during the summer drought season with a camp full of 13 teenage boys from the Bay Area and being forced into manual labor planting trees for the greater environmental good of the world.

So I decided to do the most logical thing I could think of (second to catching the next flight out immediately and running back to my swimming pool in California). I curled up into a ball on my bed, and fell asleep doing my AP Government summer homework.

It took a lot of BS Poker (discovering my newfound talent when someone very offhandedly remarked, “Wow, you really are from MVHS”) and many long bus rides before I finally got over my condescending dislike of this group. It might have been the stories they told in the wee hours of the morning that showcased aspects of them that I would never have guessed just from waving at them in the hallways and corridors for the past twelve years. At times, it’s about realizing that they’re just people too — people who hate work, getting up at 7 a.m. and cheese with just as much passion as you do.

And because of this, fourteen days filled with sunburns, broken hot water faucets, and freezing desert nights wasn’t so bad anymore. Somehow, it’s all really worth it when everyone lines up in a neat little line to send you off at the airport with their own goodbyes, even if you do know they’re secretly there in an attempt to stall their final presentations in the Beijing office behind you.

So let me attempt to save you a trip across the world. Make some friends. Real friends. Not friends-who-I-can-borrow-APUSH-notes-from-on-Friday-when-I’m-leaving-to-win-a-math-competition, but friends who will stay up with you all night to await herding sheep the next morning, and then laugh at you when an ostrich chases you across the desert for your cup of dried corn. Although that sounds rather obvious, MVHS, with a few exceptions, isn’t particularly known for our abilities to stay in contact ten years down the line, look back on these few years together, and laugh.

Senior year has been the time that I have realized I have spent perhaps a tad too much time trying to chase the future and not enough time catching up with those around me. In these last few weeks, the nostalgia arises when I know will never again have a weekend overflowing with too much Mock Trial and not enough social life. I will never again be able to relive those precious few days burning under the hot desert sun and running away from the broken sprinklers, but I will have the precious moments to remember ten, twenty years down the line.

Because high school should be the time to build memories.