By Taylor Johnson
Choosing a senior quote is a moment many people think about during their four years in high school. Even though the quote is less than 100 characters, it has an immense amount of meaning to students.
Recently, an email went out to all seniors from the yearbook staff explaining that senior quotes were due September 16. Chaos erupted throughout the Lovett Halls.
“I have way too many options, I don’t know how I am going to choose in time,” Lane Caldwell said, clearly very stressed.
“I have been waiting my whole Lovett career to choose an unforgettable senior quote and now that the time has come I have no clue what to do,” said Milan Barnes.
There are a lot of rules that go along with choosing a senior quote. Most of them are about what not to do:
- NO acronyms, NO abbreviations, NO creative spelling
- NO time stamp references to movies, television, Netflix or other episodic media content
- NO geographic location coordinates
- NO profanity, slang, obscene, offensive or questionable/inappropriate content
To prevent mischief from sneaky seniors, all submitted quotes are reviewed by the school administration and yearbook staff.
Senior Parker Taylor, a member of the yearbook staff, explained to me that all these rules are to ensure that the process of making the yearbook runs smoothly and that no inappropriate quotes find their way into the yearbook.
To find out how seniors were choosing their quotes, I sent out a survey to the senior class.
There were a range of answers from the random (“Doom scrolling on Instagram,” “I watched some episodes of South Park and found some bars”) to the sincere (“I found something that resonates with me and my personal journey.”)
A lot of the responses conveyed that it has been a struggle for students to find their senior quotes.
From the data, I concluded that there are two main ways that people approach choosing their senior quotes: The first way is finding a funny iconic quote that can be found on social media.
In the senior lounge, Henry Walter told me, “I found a quote from Fortnite that speaks to me.” Amazing senior quotes can even be found in video games!
Alaysia Georges was also considering a Fortnite quote in addition to one from Eric Cartman from South Park or on TikTok. Fortnite seems to be a popular resource for senior quotes this year.
The second way people are approaching finding their senior quote is by quoting their idols.
Olivia Janis decided to quote Bob Marley, her favorite singer. Lane Caldwell is choosing between a quote from Maddie Zeigler or Kim Kardashian, two of her favorite icons.
I talked to Ms. Gilmore, who graduated from Lovett in 2007. She had two senior quotes. Her first one was from musician Ben Harper: “My choice is what I choose to do and if I am causing no harm it shouldn’t bother you. Your choice is who you choose to be and if you are causing no harm you are alright with me.”
Mrs. Gilmore said she still lives by this quote. “I still live by this quote,” she said. “I do not regret using it for my senior quote one bit.”
The second quote she used was aimed toward her experience at Lovett as a Kindergarten through 12th grader. This quote was from a Dave Matthews song: “Take your hands from your eyes my love, all good things must come to an end sometimes but don’t burn the day away.”
While she now thinks it might have been “a little too deep for just graduating high school,” she still thinks it was a good pick.
How about our head of the Upper School? He also recalled his quote very quickly: “Cubs win. Cubs win. Holy Cow.”
I asked him where it came from. “I grew up in Chicago and have been a die-hard Cubs fan my whole life,” said Mr. Boswell. He explained that Harry Caray was one of his favorite sports commentators, who delivered this iconic quote during a huge Cubs win.
He said the quote still means a lot to him, “but if I was a senior now with my more developed brain I would definitely not choose the same quote.”
And what did our school’s yearbook advisor, Ms. Konigmark, pick for her own high school yearbook? I stopped into the English department center to find out. She started dying laughing when I asked what her senior quote was.
“It was so embarrassing it makes me want to die,” she said cackling.
One of her quotes came from a postcard of kittens dressed up like ladies. It says: “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.” Ms. Davis, who was sitting across from her at a table, started laughing so hard that another teacher poked her head into the office to say she could hear them from down the hall.
The other quote she included on her page was a bit more serious (and cat free): It was “some kind of Amish-sounding quote from Madeleine L’Engle about how you need both men and women to be whole.”
She wasn’t thrilled about that one, either. Odd are there are going to be a lot of us looking back on our own yearbook quotes, wondering what we were thinking.
