By Sofia Rudus ’26
I first started running in fourth grade. There was a running practice that my kindergarten teacher was having, and I decided to go. Immediately, she could see how well I ran, and suggest that I join the middle school team. It was nerve wracking running with people so much older than me, yet was where it all started. I ran for Derby Middle school for five years, which was an important and special part of my life.
As high school comes to an end and life begins to change, I reflect on the many different emotions and thoughts I have about the past and the future. As I was taking a nap recently, I began to think about repetitive tasks. We repeat things daily, not realizing how often we do it. Though we can say we have done it for months or years, it does not seem like that. I think about running practice and how we do static and dynamic stretches every single day. Practice has gone on for about six weeks, and is soon coming to an end. Though stretching is not my most enjoyed part of practice, it’s all manageable. Even the hardest workouts are all manageable. The results are not always perfect, but we are all much stronger than we believe. The point of this is that these monotonous and challenging tasks that we have to do seem like such a burden now, but will be missed. Each repetitive task in life is a reminder of the many different days we have lived and the specific time that it happened. I think that because of how temporary it all is, is what makes me feel sad that it is ending. There is also a certain feeling of satisfaction of pushing yourself that I will miss, to know that I am capable of pushing myself when my legs hurt very badly and I am completely gassed.
At the moment, tasks are hard or boring, but when I look back on them, I realize that they were not that bad and that I was able to get through it, survive and still reflect.
The Raider Press 