Granite Bay High School seniors Jennifer Johnson and Jenna Daly are standing in the center of a desolated road, accompanied only by the flashes of their digital cameras. Later, they spend a day in San Francisco. Then, they go to an away sports game.

Next on the list, they want to go on the campus’ roof.

It’s all in an attempt to make the most out of their final days of high school.

Johnson and Daly have drafted a “bucket list,” a way to ensure they leave high school with no missed opportunities. It includes items like taking pictures in the middle of
nowhere.

“It’s a list of all the different things we want to do before high school gets out,” Johnson said.

“We still have a lot to do. We just keep adding to the list. It’s a bunch of random stuff that we wouldn’t have done if we didn’t write it down,” Daly said.

Because graduation is finally here.

This Saturday, the names of the seniors in the class of 2009 will be read. They will be handed their diplomas, turn their tassels and be sent off into the real world.

“It’s real bittersweet,” Johnson said. “I love so many people here, but it’s really exciting to go and start something new.”

***

Pum. Pum. Pum. It’s the last weekend in April. Graduation is little more than a month away, but the rhythmic beating of taiko drums memorizes the over 1,200 prospective freshmen at Stanford Admit Weekend.

While the drum performance was originally derived from traditional Japanese warfare practices, it is now being used to prepare students for a battle of a different kind: college.

In attendance is GBHS senior Kapil Yedidi, who was accepted to Stanford University in December as an early action applicant.

“I (have) wanted to go to Stanford since my freshman year, but I really didn’t imagine getting in at the middle of my senior year,” Yedidi said.

Having temporarily suffered an early onset of senioritis, Yedidi now finds himself heavily invested in projects for various Advancement Placement classes.

“After I got accepted in December, I started to slack off a lot,” Yedidi said. “Then, I got my act together in March, which is funny because that was around the time when everyone else found out about their college acceptances. But I just had a realization that there were three months of school left, and I wanted to finish strong.”

After school, he is hard at work on a model elevator demonstration for AP Physics, an economics project involving analyzing different trends in the music industry and a 15-minute film for AP Literature.

But he’s still making time for all the senior events.

“All of the previous three years, we’ve gotten to see seniors doing all these activities we can’t,” Yedidi said. “It’s just a way to spend more time with people who you might not have seen in a while. I’m excited about Senior Picnic, Senior Ball, graduation, and I guess just about the future.”

There’s good reason to be excited about the future because it couldn’t look brighter for seniors of the class of 2009.

This year, there were a record number of GBHS students being accepted into a University of California campus, which was a particularly incredible accomplishment considering the trying economic times and reduction in available spots for applicants.

***

It’s 3:30 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon.

Normally, GBHS senior Lisa Wang would be in Room 826 leading an Academic Decathlon practice, but with the commencement ceremony only a few weeks away and the Academic Decathlon season long since finished, she finally has time to explore other interests.

She’s at Home Start, a shelter in Roseville that aids homeless families with children.

Here, Wang is a tutor, helping students in kindergarten to fifth grade with their homework.

“Even though I started (the program) because community service is required (to graduate), it has opened my eyes to something I missed out on,” Wang said. “I really wish I would have volunteered earlier.”

With the end of AP testing, she finally has the time to fulfill her one regret in high school. She helps out at Home Start twice a week.

“I like to think it makes a really big different in their lives,” Wang said. “These families are always on the move, and they don’t really have any stability in their lives, but when (the kids) have something they can go to and get attention from people who care about them, it makes a difference.”

Other seniors have regrets as well. Johnson wishes she would have branched out more.

“Even though I love student government so much, I think it would’ve been cool to have gotten involved in other things like journalism, like a different club, just to have tried something new. I kind of found my niche and stayed with it,” Johnson said.

But many were happy with the decisions they made.

“If anyone were to do high school over again, I’m sure they would change a lot of things, but I was confident in my decision-making,” Yedidi said. “When I got here, I wanted to try something that I probably wasn’t that great at, which was speech and debate. I’m happy with how things turned out. Some of my best memories were with the speech and debate team.”

No longer regretting anything, Wang is excited to attend UC Berkeley in the fall.

“I feel like it’s the start of something new,” Wang said. “I’ll meet new people and hopefully build relationships that will last a lifetime…. Hopefully, I will be able to determine a more definite direction of what I want to do. I’m ready to get that crazy Berkeley experience.”

***

All seniors have it. That moment of realization when they recognize high school is ending and they are moving on.

For Sarah Treleaven, that moment came when hanging up the yearbook cover on a wall in the publication lab with fellow editor Mehreen Siddiqui.

“High school has been amazing, but I think I’ve gotten all I can get out of it,” Treleaven said. “When (Siddiqui) and I put the yearbook cover on the wall, we were just, ‘OK, now we can pass the torch on to the next people.’”

Now, she sits outside the choir room, flipping through the yearbook with senior Hannah Meinzer, as a peaceful breeze floats by.

The two recall old memories and reminiscence. Meinzer reflects on how much she has grown.

“My freshman year, I went to my first football game,” Meinzer said. “Granite Bay scored a touchdown, and everyone cheered. At halftime, I think either dance or drill… did a dance to ‘When September Ends.’ I was like, ‘Wow, four years from now I’m going to look back and remember this moment.’

“Then, this year, I went to my first football game as a senior, and I hadn’t even thought about that moment, but at halftime, there was dance, and (the memory from freshman year) just popped back into a head. I realized how far I’ve come since then. It was like my own time capsule.”

After being handed their diplomas, Treleaven will be off to UCLA and Meinzer to Brigham Young University in Utah. Neither expected to end up at their respective college.

“I had thought all along I would want to go to UC San Diego, and I got in there,” Treleaven said. “I applied to UCLA on a whim. I didn’t really think about it… I totally thought I was not going to get in, but I got in, so I gave it a lot of consideration. I talked to people, talked to my family, and I decided on UCLA.”

While unexpected events happened, both feel they ended up at the place that they belong.

“There is no place where I’d rather be. (BYU) is where I’m supposed to go. That’s where I fit, where I’d do the most good,” Meinzer said.

***
GBHS changes people, just as people’s perspective on GBHS changes.

“My first high school experience was the Grizzly Retreat, and when we were there, we were focusing on all of the things that we could do to fix (GBHS),” Treleaven said. “We were talking about all the problems the school had, and I left wondering what I had gotten myself into.”

Finding her niche in high school, both student government and yearbook, helped her become acclimated.

“Our school is unique in the fact that there are so many different programs that are out there,” Treleaven said. “There is so much that you can’t help but get involved in something.”

Yedidi remembers thinking how big the GBHS campus was when he was a freshman.

Now, he’s heading to the second largest college campus in the world.

But for Yedidi, there’s no rush to move on.

“I’ve never felt that I’m just counting down days until school is over,” Yedidi said. “I want to take it all in and enjoy it.”