By Allison Fitts

Over the past four years at this great Academy, I have gone to school 600+ days and sat through 5,000+ class periods. My time at STA includes thousands of memories, stories and friends, many that I will always remember and will be hard to be replaced.

When I think about going to college next year and having to leave all the great things about STA behind, I get upset because I realize that many of the things I love so much right now will be hard to replace in college. Some of my favorite things about STA will be worth replacing in college, but others will be impossible to match.

Here is a list of the top 10 things I will miss most about STA and how I hope to fill those voids when I go off to college.

10. Nan Bone

This is one of the things that will have to go unreplaced. Nothing in college will ever compare to hearing, “Good evening St. Teresa’s families. This is Nan Bone.” on my home phone. For one, I won’t have a home phone, and two, if the dean at MU is calling me as often as Nan does, I think I might have a problem.

9. Themes

I don’t know if there will ever be another time in my life when I will need as many costumes as I did at STA. We dress up for games, Friday theme days, Halloween and the list goes on. In college, I’m sure I’ll need costumes for classic themed parties (think toga) and holidays, so a bin of costumes in my dorm closet will be a must.

8. Fish bowls in AP Lit class

My classmates might think I’m joking about this one, but I’m actually not. However much I hate to admit this, fish bowl discussions in Mr. Fast’s class were some of the most interesting and thought-provoking class periods I had at STA. These types of small group discussions will be hard to come by when I am going to a school with 30,000 other students, but I am excited to show off what we all learned from fish bowls if ever given the chance.

7. Desserts

Describe STA in one word: food. Every last one of us has an obsessions with Waldo Pizza, Chipotle and JoJo’s (just kidding about that last one), but the supreme food at all of STA has to be desserts. Believe it or not, before I came to STA I didn’t know what a cake ball was. Oh how naive I was. I know that dessert still exists in college, but never to the same standard of quality and quantity as here at STA. This is another void that must remain unfilled, unless I have Maddie Dang ship me desserts from Tulane on a monthly basis, which I’m thinking might happen.

6. Publication nights

If you aren’t a Dart nerd, you might as well skip this number because you’ll be annoyed at how much fun we have as a staff and how you’ll never be able to understand our overall goofiness. Publication nights were always a weird paradox for me because they ended up being some of the most stressful nights at STA, but also some of the most fun and rewarding. With the hypothetical questions at dinner to the spur-of-the-moment dance parties to Hall & Oates, it’s safe to say that publication nights will be something I can never replace.

5. Sports

Whether it’s been me playing or me watching others make STA proud, sports have been a huge part of my time here. I have loved the sense of community that comes with supporting our Stars on the field, and it doesn’t hurt that we’re pretty darn good at sports, too. Since I’ve been at STA, our school has brought home countless state banners. This is the one thing on the list that I think will be super easy to replace. Not only is MU good at sports, but they were the inventors of the concept of homecoming. Therefore, us Tigers know how to make sporting events competitive and fun, which is something the Star in me will always value.

4. Yard days

During every yard day, I always have what I like to call “Only at STA” moments. At what other school will you find girls playing kick ball, eating ice cream and blasting music? The answer is that you won’t. STA is totally unique and it’s the moments where I’ve experienced that one of a kind sense of community that I’ll miss the most. Most college campuses, especially MU, have beautiful quads in which to spend nice down. Of course the clowns with balloon animals and face paint won’t be there, but I’m pretty okay with that.

3. Exploring campus

People often compare our school to Hogwarts and I think the most prolific connection we have to the fictional school is all of the hidden rooms and passageways that we have on campus. Spending free periods with friends exploring the graffiti room, the fourth floor, the skylight above the auditorium and, of course, the tunnel have been some of the more mischievous moments from my time at STA, but I wouldn’t take them back for one second (remember, Ms. Bone, I gave you a shout out earlier). Sadly, when I go off to college I won’t be able to replace this great thing about STA because in the real world it’s called trespassing.

2. The tartan plaid

Real women wear plaid. We all know it’s true. In fact, Forever 21 and many other store have caught on to the phenomenon that is tartan plaid and started to sell things with that material in their stores. As this trend progresses, we can be the ones to say, “Yeah. We were the ones to start the worldwide plaid craze.” I hope to make a quilt with my STA t-shirts and my old skirt and keep the tartan plaid with me throughout my college days. In the end, though, us STA girls in the classic skirt will always wear it best.

1. The Class of 2012

It goes without saying that you girls are the funniest, sweetest, smartest, craziest, most unforgettable group of people that I’ve ever had the pleasure of being friends with, and because of that, you guys will never be replaced. Sure, college will bring about many new friends for us all and it’ll be so fun! I for one am excited to make friends with the girls on my dorm floor. From our sixth floor Facebook group I have already learned that they can all quote “Bridesmaids” word-for-word, too, and there is something oddly comforting in that. But no matter where all of our lives take us, no matter what new friends we make, I will always cherish the sisterhood we have formed here during our past four years. I love you all!