Senior Backpacks: One Last Backpack

One playful tradition gives seniors a chance to reconnect with childhood before taking their next big step.

Seniors rocking their character backpacks.

Every year, Rancho seniors get to participate in a longstanding tradition: wearing children’s backpacks to school. Senior backpacks, along with senior skip days and senior pranks, reflect the bridge between childhood and adulthood that make senior year a symbolic form of closure. Perhaps it is a calculated form of regression, a way to ignore the impending transition to adulthood that is quickly approaching. There are a lot of transformations that suddenly occur during senior year: we suddenly become voters, we can file our own taxes, and we have to make the treacherous decision of deciding the trajectory of our lives. Every senior gets bombarded with the following questions: Where are you going to college? What is your major? What field are you going into? Will you join any clubs?

While, for some, the anticipation of college represents years of hard work and dedication, for others, it overwhelms them with stress and makes them miss when their biggest problems were deciding which TV show to watch. For senior Oliver Cryan, Spiderman has been an integral part of his life since he was 3. “Having my role model on my backpack is the biggest honor. I carry Spiderman with pride every day at school.” While, for Ollie, his interest in Spiderman was no surprise to his friends, for others, senior backpacks offer an opportunity for self-expression and a chance to showcase childhood memories to friends whom most of us met later in our lives. Sage Skinner joined Rancho for her freshman year, but her affinity for mermaids has long outlived her time here. For her, getting a backpack with Ariel on it was a “full circle moment” because she was obsessed with the character when she was younger.

Senior year is a very precious moment in all of our lives. It’s important to enjoy it through traditions like senior backpacks that help us realize how momentous it truly is. It’s important to stop and smell the roses along the way and not get swept up in the stresses of it all. Don’t blink, or it’ll pass us all by!