It’s a special time to be at Harker: the year before the school’s 125th and the first with a new head of school and two new buildings on campus, assuming no major construction delays. And it’s a special year for me as well—I am the youngest in my family and the last of three to attend Harker, and this will be my last year. I am therefore confronted by both beginnings and endings.

I have many memories of standing in the dark plaza outside the Mexican Heritage Theater after attending an orchestra concert or singing in United Voices, struggling to coordinate with my parents to arrange transport home. I’ve seen a play performed in the round at Blackford and sung in the intimate venue of Nichols Auditorium. So when the curtain rises for the first time on the new theater stage, I will be aware that even as a new age begins, some of my memories will cease to be part of the Harker experience as it is and will instead become snapshots of the Harker experience as it was.

These memories will not be the first, nor the last, to become a part of history. Harker has seen changes to its name and nature over its many decades, and continual transformation even in the relatively short time since my eldest brother first set foot on this campus. He witnessed the institution of the laptop program at the middle school for the first time, the opening of Nichols Hall and the Singh Aquatic Center and the storied senior prank in which the Harker Homework Management System, or HHMS, was hacked.

The changes didn’t stop when I joined Harker. If anything, they accelerated. I witnessed the fall of HHMS and Athena2 and the rise of PCR and Schoology, and I observed the disappearance of the eagle from the Winged Post and of parking from the Saratoga campus (the latter hopefully being temporary, the former likely permanent). And, of course, I saw the opening of the gym.

For all the changes to the school that I have witnessed, the most substantial shift in my own life will occur at one of Harker’s most traditional ceremonies, graduation. I suspect that I have been to too many Harker graduations; my own will be the sixth that I attend, and by now I know the venue, format, and even opening music well.

The implications of a graduation as a time of beginning and ending are clear enough, so instead of articulating them I will add one last reflection. I’ve heard five graduation speeches delivered by our former Head of School, Christopher Nikoloff. I’ve learned from him to “see like a baby,” “love like a Labrador,” “let it go,” “get philosophical” and “sing in the lifeboats.” But for my own graduation, I will hear the words of our new head of school, Brian Yager. In one sense this is an ending to the speeches I am accustomed to. But in another sense, of course, it is a beginning.

Praveen Batra is a senior at the upper school. In his free time, he enjoys playing ragtime music on piano and obsessing over the latest Apple products.