When one door closes, another door opens.

This saying is one that many, including students, know extremely well. Even in high school, students are familiar with beginnings and endings, being faced with such things consistently at school.

“Endings are the beginning of everything,” said junior Tiffany Gillmore.

Some students would say that if they want a period in their life to end well that they would also need to start off well, believing that they should put their best foot forward for the journey through life.

“Where would your first step be and is it what you want to take?” asked junior Austin Budro. “How would you want to reach the goal you have at the end of your journey?”

While some believe that their beginning is wholly connected to their ending, other students completely disagree. Students such as these believe that the ending, how a person ends a period in their life, is more important than how they begin that period.

“People’s beginnings and endings are separate,” said junior Ashley Boutte. “It doesn’t matter how you began, just how you end.”

And still others believe that what happens in between the beginning and the ending is what really matters in life. Like the long summer road trips, it’s all about the journey, and not the destination or starting point.

“I would look at it like a journey,” said senior Katie Murphy. “You can begin a journey in a certain way, but what you do in between can completely alter the ending positively or negatively. It’s all about what choices you make between the beginning and the end.”

However, students are relatively near sighted towards the future, at least compared to adults in their 20s and beyond. Going through high school, most students become stressed when they don’t realize that, in hindsight, failing a test is not going to significantly impact their future.

“A lot of high school students don’t understand that their beginning is not their ending, so it causes them to stress out a lot,” said Boutte. “They can’t look to the end of their lives and see it is not a bunch of tests.”

Seniors especially begin to understand the concept that when something (high school, for example) ends that it isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“As seniors, we’re reaching an end, but also coming to another beginning,” said Murphy. “As our time at high school ends, our life in the real world begins. The choices we make can truly impact everything. As young adults, we need to remind ourselves that it’s not going to be easy, but we just have to push through and find joy in the hard times, and rejoice and be grateful for the good.”

It can be hard for anyone going through the ‘end’ portion of the cycle, especially if it’s a painful one, but it’s usually the best possible direction for a student’s life to go. Then that student must go through a new beginning, which can be daunting.

“To the one who’s facing an ending, a beginning will come and for the one who’s beginning something new, it will end,” said junior Alina Baltazar. “And no matter what lies in between the beginning and the end, enjoy the journey; learn from it until you reach the end, and begin again.”