Senior year is a momentous experience. Going through four years of high school is no easy feat, and one of the stresses and exciting tasks of senior year is the yearbook. The black v-neck shirts and ties elegantly unite all the seniors in the senior portraits. But, senior portraits can sometimes be a hit or miss. Maybe your photo wasn’t too hot — your hair is frizzy or you look like you are about to sneeze — and the senior quote is your time for redemption.

This year for the first time ever, the yearbook gave seniors a limit of just 75 characters of space to craft their own personalized quote. In past years, there was no space limit, but oftentimes some quotes were too long and required revisions to fit in the yearbook. Choosing a quote can prove to be quite challenging: in ten years when someone flips through the yearbook and possibly sees yours, what do you want them to remember about you? What will these few words tell your children about this time in your life? Okay, maybe it’s not that important, but that senior quote is essentially your final words as a high schooler, preserved forever.

Many seniors, including Kleigh Carroll, struggled with the direction to take their quote, “You need to know if you are choosing the funny route or the inspirational route. It was a very stressful time and I still don’t know if I made the right decision.” The truth is, you can pretty much say anything (within reason), so sometimes people opt for a senior quote only understandable to themselves and their friends.

Senior Eliza Boyle was fiercely critical of this inside joke approach, “Will you remember that inside joke when you are looking back on it? Probably not. And then no one else knows what you are talking about. It’s not an inside joke anymore if you are putting it inside a book.” A majority of the stress of senior quotes is that there will be future eyes looking at them. Therefore, it’s important that the quote is unique and creative, yet also easy to understand.

“I was extremely stressed because you only get one senior quote and everyone always regrets it and everyone always has a bad quote,” Carroll said.

Whether it’s due to the pressure of senior quotes to be timeless, or the lack of ideas,
some seniors leave their quote blank.“I couldn’t think of anything that I thought was funny, original and I wouldn’t hate in like 20 years,” Boyle said. The “perfect” senior quote is of course subjective, but many believe it should reflect an aspect of your identity. “The perfect senior quote is something that’s at least somewhat unique to you … something that you think is important to your high school career or that has significance. Humor is the cherry on top,” Boyle said

The senior quote is such a traditional and momentous opportunity that it’s almost unimaginable to just give up and write nothing. “I feel like it’s a nice way to add like your lasting like mark of individuality in the yearbook because we are already all wearing the same thing. We need something to show our personality,” Carroll said.

After all of this stressing and possible future judgment, are senior quotes even worth it? Carroll absolutely believes “yes,” “It’s for us in the future, it’s not for anyone else. It’s for your kids and who cares what anyone else thinks.”

Ultimately, if you had fun choosing your quote, you can breathe a sigh of relief. Senior quotes should be a jubilant way to cap off your high school experience and they will likely lead to some amusing memories in the future.