Between running a 10k, completing a 24-hour challenge in Target and going on a road trip, second-semester seniors are taking advantage of their limited time before graduation. Many students have turned to bucket lists to plan their last experiences before heading to college.
Senior Lauren Dempsey made a bucket list with her friends at the beginning of the year. She wants to go to the beach at least every week, especially because she might not live near a beach next year. Additionally, Dempsey hopes to run a 10k and revisit nostalgic Menlo Park spots she and her friends would frequent as freshmen, like the boba tea store Mr. Green Bubble.
Other action items include attending a wedding — invited or not — hitting a million TikTok followers, wearing flip-flops to school and biking to campus. “We wanted to make a bucket list so that we could take advantage of the time that we have left, especially things that have to do with being in high school and living in the Bay Area,” Dempsey said.
Senior Jackson Coleman uses the Notes app on his phone to type out a bucket list with a total of 96 to-do’s. Coleman’s senior bucket list includes watching more long-form media like movies and documentaries, creating a club, starting a business, producing music, racing cars at a race track and traveling — he hopes to go on a road trip, camp in Yosemite, visit Spain and Buton Island in Indonesia.
He also has a separate free period bucket list with fellow seniors that contains multiple different food places to try, going on hikes and having a spa day. Coleman wants to complete as much as he can before graduation. “Honestly, if I do 10% of them, then I count that as success because then I’m doing more than I otherwise would have,” Coleman said.
Seniors Mia Monsalve and Saniya Ahmed started generating their bucket lists in sixth grade and have been checking items off since; they aim to finish by senior year. Their list includes breaking out into song at a restaurant — “We’re not singers, so breaking out into song would be hilarious and awkward,” Monsalve said — visiting IKEA, sneaking out of their house, wearing matching outfits, ‘booing’ people’s houses (ding-dong ditching with a twist of leaving candy at the door) and doing a 24-hour overnight challenge in Target. They’ve already attended a concert together, watched the sunset and escaped an escape room.
Now, their prank war with other seniors is a top priority. “We’ve gotten closer to a lot of kids in our grade already while pranking them as part of our bucket list, which makes fun memories,” Monsalve said. “I love this kind of stuff [and] I really want to fulfill our sixth-grade goal.”
Senior Miraal Zaki and her friends made a bucket list of places they want to go to, which includes San Francisco, Half Moon Bay (for the sunset), concerts and a few specific restaurants. Zaki has her own personal bucket list related to self-growth, with items like meditating and figuring out a good workout routine. “When I go to college, I want to be able to take care of myself well so I have a personal, more healthy [bucket list] focused on personal self-care related goals and then a friend one that’s just fun and filled with activities,” Zaki said.
Since the start of the second semester, Zaki and her friends have been adding more to their list. Now that their time at Menlo is coming to an end, Zaki thinks that completing their bucket lists will help the seniors make the most of the time they have left. “It would just remind everyone that we’re in our final stretch and we should enjoy our time together for the last few months,” Zaki said.
