The people who you see around you are, for most of you, the same people who you loved and hated for two-thirds - nearly all - of your conscious life. They are people who you took for granted, in your assurance that they'd always be in your life.

Some hidden part of you realized that this day would come, the day that you've been working toward since you first set foot in kindergarten, and even before that. It is a new beginning, but it is also an end to something that you probably won't fully appreciate until you are in your thirties and forties, and which will grow in significance as you grow older.

You won't be going back to high school. The people who were so much a part of your life will be no longer. Yes, some of you will stay in touch, but most of you will not and your separation will grow wider with years and distance.

You'll return for reunions, hoping to regain that which you once had, if only for a weekend, but you won't be able to. Not really.

Most of you will not be staying in Millinocket, and as badly as some of you have wanted to leave this town, you'll feel differently when you are older.

Many of you will be going on to college, but it won't be the same as when you graduated from elementary and middle school. There will be people around you, but they won't be the same people. Still, this will keep you from missing high school. It will, at least, put it off for a few years.

For as long as they are on this earth, your parents will probably be an important part of your life, but even this relationship will change.

For one thing, you probably won't be living in their home for much longer. You'll be leaving - off to college or to work, neither of which are likely to be here in Millinocket.

Some of you will be leaving the state, or even the country. By the time of your ten-year reunion, a few of you will be dead, never to be a part of your lives again.

In college, or on your first job, you'll make new friends - different people who you will make room for in your lives. But it won't be the same as in high school. Having experienced separation once, there won't be that sense of permanence, and these friends won't quite take the place of the ones you left behind.

Eventually, you'll marry, and some of these marriages will last.

You'll have children and, in seventeen or eighteen years, your children will be experiencing the same thing that you are going through right now. Only the place will change.

Enjoy these last moments of your childhood, for that's what these days are. Appreciate those who surround you, and take care to make some memories, because what they say is true: You may come back, but you can't go home again.