Champions (WY Remix)

In just a few hours, I will officially be a high school alumni. To all the staff, teachers, and students of Whitney Young, thank you for a blessed 4 years.

Dear Whitney Young...or rather Whitney M. Young Magnet High School,

I didn’t want you at first…

Even as you flexed your “#1 school in THE Nation” muscles and “state championships” curvatures, I was unimpressed

Because all your other aspects were frankly, a mess

I’m no Hercules, but you made me go the distance,

I wanted to sleep more, but I got up at my alarm clock’s insistence,

For a 57 minute commute time? I needed persistence  

I’d often question my own existence, when I had to wake up at 5:45

After being spoiled by 7am rises, I can’t believe I’ve survived

I thought things couldn’t get worse, but man was I in for a surprise

The bottom floor of the school is like a complex maze,

Trying to analyze how to get around would take days

So yeah, with you, I wasn’t that impressed

But I think it’s because deep down, I was jealous

Because at my old school I was the best,

But being #1 is the norm here; you’re just one of the rest

At a school where we have pep rallies for basketball and chess

And now after four years, I can say that I was blessed,

When you gripped me with your 8 o’clock start times and threw me into class

Crust still hanging from my eyes like meat hooks

Taking my mind on a journey from Speech to Ethnic Studies,

When you kicked me with your West Side location

Making me realize that life is more than my safe, pothole free North Side

But that roars and echoes of downtown and sirens are just as much a part of the equation,

As the subjects learned in the classroom

You shoved Baccis into my Pizza Hut world

You played twice with my hunger at Ella’s

And made me feel special at Billy Goat’s

I got to taste Chicago and Freedom in off campus lunch

Thank you teachers, for while I was still a seed, you laid the foundation,

Nurturing my academic soil and watering me with support

Thank you encouraging us to not be afraid of our own voice

To have the courage to make our own choices

So I’ll miss when after a stressful day, during lunch we’d die laughing

Get out of “blue house right now” from Mr. Fanning

Thank you for being an aquarium where I could meet other dolphins,

But I know that I can’t stay here, I have to explore more

Even as I swim through an ocean of knowledge scared to the core

I know that Whitney Young will always be my shore