Aubree Rumancik is a senior at Lakeview High School. She has attended Lakeview her entire life. She claims “Everyone here is all she knows.” 

Rumancik is about to take on the next big steps of her life. She’s more excited to graduate high school and see where life takes her. But also agrees that she’s nervous because it’s a lot of pressure to figure out what you are going to do after graduation.

While she’s excited to graduate high school, she’s going to miss it as well. 

“The routine of it all. School is all I know, we’ve all been in school for as long as we could remember, and graduating is then getting rid of time that was constantly being taken up with school. It’ll be weird existing with all that extra time (though obviously it’ll be taken up sooner than later with a job) but even then that time spent at work will be different than being in class,” Rumancik says.

She reports that high school for her has been difficult at times, but there were also times where she had good, enjoyable moments. 

Senior year hasn’t quite played out exactly how she planned. Rumancik says, “I was really stressed out about this year because it’s the final wave and while I didn’t sign up for any excessively difficult classes, I’ve heard the pressure to figure out what you’re doing after graduation and such can be pretty suffocating.” 

Even though she thought this was going to be her most stressful year, she says,  “It’s actually been my most relaxed year, probably, which shouldn’t be a surprise, but it is. I’ve already gotten through the worst parts of high school without even realizing that it’s such a weight off  my shoulders. Everyone says this, but the year really did fly by. Days go by so slow at times, but the weeks seem to fly by.”

There are classes that she likes and other classes not so much. 

Rumancik enjoyed classes that her friends were in. Being with people she knows and can talk to is better than not knowing anyone at all. 

Her hardest class was physics and she quotes, “which I was told was no-joke and people certainly weren’t lying.” It was a lot of pressure with being on time and trying to understand the material, which resulted in her dropping the class. 

Even though the class was hard she says, “However, Bucko was a fantastic teacher in the semester I had her and it has nothing to do with her teaching at all. If anything, I’d say she’s one of the more admirable teachers I’ve had because she’s genuinely into the subject she teaches and is eager to help.”

But there were classes and things in her high school career that overwhelmed her. Such as managing her mental health on top of her education.

“From freshman year to junior year, but very specifically freshman and sophomore year, adjusting to managing my school work on top of my mental health along with covid and everything – it was really hard. Instinctively, you want to give yourself a break, but taking a break puts you more behind. And learning with covid on top of that only made it increasingly harder, because now I’m feeling unmotivated, behind, and the challenge of working on top of covid was an obstacle no one could’ve prepared me for, as this was new for everyone,” Rumancik says. 

But even though those years were hard for her, her favorite year was freshman year because it was exciting to be in the building, and to feel “older”.

She also says that freshman year was her favorite because “it was before most of my friends either transferred to TCTC or moved away, so that being my final year with a lot of people holds more importance to ninth grade as well. I only have good memories of freshman year. It’s unfortunate that it was cut so short with covid.”

Rumancik has never had a specific path she’s wanted to follow in her career and never felt a proper calling to anything either. “I don’t believe it’s fair to expect people our age to have a dead set career and college in mind right away.” 

After graduation she plans on trying out new job experiences as much as possible to discover her strengths, weaknesses, etc. and go on from there. 

She said she’d be happiest working with animals or people, so that’s her start. The world has a lot to offer. 

Good luck to all your future goals Aubree! I know you’ll leave a good impact on a lot of peoples lives!