Days before my high school graduation, I stepped foot (or high heel) into my elementary school for the last time. A sea of ugly green and white graduation gowns worn in conjunction with matching flimsy caps covered up the gigantic, colorful crayons mounted in disarray on the brick wall behind the soon-to-be Shenendehowa grads. All of this to receive not a diploma, but a manila folder.
Fifth grade Mary, with rimless glasses and a gap between her front teeth, probably would have called this folder a “vanilla” folder, just like she would refer to the Pacific Ocean as the “specific ocean.” At Orenda Elementary School, it was a tradition to create a time capsule at the end of our elementary school careers filled with documents that would still be in the year of 2011. While it wasn’t quite like the Zoey 101 episode where deep secrets and confessions were burned to DVDs only to be watched a century later, they were documents that stood frozen in time (or dusty inside of a school filing cabinet).
After the parents of us imminent graduates took enough blurry and unfocused photos outside, the herd of hideous gowns made its way inside the building. Between the speckled flooring and drop ceilings, the school felt a lot smaller. We were led into the gymnasium with abysmal lighting that Cher Horowitz certainly would not approve of. A sizable section of the maple wood floor was devoted to these manila folders with each of our names penciled on the tab.
Pasted inside of the folder was an art project gone wrong. My horrific scissor skills were responsible for cutting out newspaper columns, fruity McDonald’s drinks and catalog snippets. The contents held within the folder were what we all came back to school for. Inner thoughts on school subjects, teachers and friends were sloppily scribed into the 13-page document. In almost a decade, I still don’t think my handwriting has substantially improved.
I found it comical that I left certain sections blank. Apparently, I struggled with my favorite memories of the last few years of elementary school. When I entered college, I was an electrical engineering major. I soon learned that math was not my forte, but that’s a story for another time. After reading through these pages in June 2018, I found that under “what you liked in Math” I wrote “nothing” and under “what you didn’t like in Math” I wrote “everything.” I snapped a picture and sent it to my high school math teacher who laughed and hoped my opinions of math had changed over the course of seven years. They didn’t.
Within the document was a letter I wrote to my future self. Based on some of my favorite lines from the letter, I think my problem-solving skills have remained strong throughout the years. Throughout my life, I’ve wanted a dog but that request was always met with a quick and stern “no.” Over the years, the response turned from a “no” to “you can get a dog when you’re 18.” The wheels in my mind must have been working hard for me to have written, “I’m only 10 now but I figured out what it means. When I’m 18, I’ll go to college and no pets will be allowed in dorms but I’ve found a solution. I’ll live in an apartment that allows dogs and get one.” I’m 20 years old now and I still do not have a dog. Soon.
Though my time capsule was full of blank spaces and cringe-worthy writings from a decade ago, it’s comforting to know I have evolved to some degree. Maybe another 10 years will make me look back and cringe at my thoughts and actions today.
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