Live a little

I entered Middlesex in the fall of 2020, and I still think I can grasp onto that memory and travel back there, when I was just a kid with no idea why I had to go through a pandemic during my transition to high school. But, that moment also feels like a lifetime ago, four years ago, more than 20 percent of my life right now. I know for a fact that my freshman-year self, that person, would not recognize who he is today, but I probably won’t recognize myself four years from now as well. So, as I leave this school and graduate from this chapter of my life, let's look back on my journey through Middlesex and the Anvil. 

My freshman year I was too scared and too withdrawn to do anything beyond what was required of me, so I didn’t participate in any clubs, including the Anvil. I stayed in my own bubble and only did what I thought I was capable of. I left school right after practice and really didn’t know that many people on this campus. I ate in a tent and I felt like I was camping, just living in a location temporarily, and at a moment's notice, I would have to leave.

 But, as things usually do when a pandemic gets a lot better and a vaccine is widely available, everything changed my sophomore year. By then, whether it was because I realized I only had three years left or because I felt comfortable in my own skin now, I joined a bunch of clubs, the Anvil, Improv Club, Book Lovers Club and many more. I started hanging out with more people than just those I knew my freshman year, and people in different grades. I started branching out and trying to “find my promise.” I wrote many different articles that year, but I still remember my first opinion piece, when I took too much information from an outside article, which some would call plagiarism, and had to have a talk with the current Editor-In-Chief and the opinion editor about what not to do. Fun, right? 

But I kept writing because it was fun and it allowed me to learn about things I never would have known. I wrote an article about the writing, editing, and layout process of the Anvil, that Luke Power derisively mentions every week to me, saying it is an article about how to write an article. I wrote about the Nikole Hannah-Jones controversy that spiraled out of control and resulted in the Head of School’s resignation. I interviewed the current president of the board of Trustees, Jason Robart, about the Head of School search process. I figured out how to write and tried not to plagiarize again and eventually became a chief writer in my junior year. 

Now I had more freedom to write articles of my choosing and delve deeper into topics I was interested in. I wrote articles about the Chinese spy balloon, upcoming elections in Zimbabwe, Pope Francis, and the midterm elections of 2022. I also stopped doing things because I wanted to try new things, but rather because I was deeply interested in them and loved hanging out with others who had the same interests. I started running even more because I loved the team culture, I went to Creative Writing Club every week because I liked stretching my imagination and looking in rather than just looking out at the world, and I went all-in in my classes because they were actually interesting. But the Anvil was still one of the biggest parts of my life at Middlesex and continues to impact me every day because it gave me the knowledge that even if I had never done something before, I could still excel at it and love it at the same time. 

And then, I woke up and it was my senior year, and I was now the Co-Editor-In-Chief of the Anvil, the school newspaper since 1904, a position that I never thought I would have. The editor-in-chief is an interesting position, to say the least. I had to edit half of all the articles, yell at people to finish their duties on time, and try to innovate to make the newspaper better, alongside my friend and Co-Editor-In-Chief, Harrison. I definitely didn’t accomplish all my goals and I definitely didn’t do a perfect job, but I did what I could and I like to think I pushed the needle a little farther in the right direction. 

I had never written for a school newspaper before I came to Middlesex, I never wrote for the Anvil before my freshman year, and I didn’t know much about any of the topics I wrote about before I wrote about them. Thus, in my humble and mostly inexperienced opinion, everyone should try that thing they might be interested in because, at the end of the day, everyone who is at the top of their field had a first day when they didn’t know a lick of anything about their eventual specialty. Your favorite teacher at Middlesex, the one that you respect and admire and who seems like they have everything put together, also had a first day as a teacher when they didn’t know what they were doing. 

So, as I end my senior year, let me leave you with this: we are all living our lives for the first time and nobody really knows what they are doing, so don’t be afraid to live a little. It’s over before you know it.

Nick Costantino