Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
AS I’m nearing the end of Year 13, there is a lot of pressure to immortalise my time at school.
One of the ways that my school achieves this aim is by asking all members of the graduating class to write a statement of 1,000 characters or less, which is then included in the yearbook: forever preserved for the years to come.
One thousand characters to summarise my time at school, living in Bahrain, and my life so far … did I mention that it’s 1,000 characters without spaces? That’s less than this column.
What if I choose the wrong 1,000 characters and it’s just a bunch of unintelligible nonsense? What if I forget to thank someone important, like my parents? Or what if I’m too sentimental or too blasé? I might be overthinking this.
What do we even write about? The past, retold with rose-tinted memories or the gritty realism of exam pressure?
The future, with its enigmatic, condescending aura? I don’t have a logical response to any of this, because it’s a crazy demand to condense the highlights of 18 years into less than 200 words.
Yet, we all attempt to do so. Year after year, there are pages of memories, filled with inside jokes, cheesy quotes and embarrassing pictures.
It’s a daunting prospect, but I can’t wait for my turn. Regardless of how it turns out, those 1,000 characters will be a standing testament to my life thus far; hopefully the first of many milestones.
