With the sights, sounds and smells of summer drawing ever nearer, the seniors of Cotter are walking across the final planks of the bridge that is their secondary school experience.

As most seniors have finalized their college decisions, the only high school task left to complete is the capstone speech.

The senior capstone assignment is mandatory to all graduating Cotter seniors. Each student must pick a controversial topic, research that topic, write an eight to twelve page paper to persuade their reader into agreeing with their viewpoint, and develop a five to seven minute speech about their topic.

After working for months on their research papers, Cotter seniors take relief as they sit down after giving their speech and watch the evaluation papers being passed into the basket. Countless hours of preparation have led up to this moment, sighs of relief can be heard throughout the hallways.

“I was super nervous for my speech, but once I got up there and started talking it was easy,” senior, Jen Beranek said, “and now I’m almost done with high school.”

Most speakers barely showed their nerves, many making it through without a stutter. Though some got stuck a points, no one got to see the face of someone who has completely spaced out, missing the look of fear as they forget what part of the speech comes next.

Now that speeches have come to a close, all that’s left to do is walk across that stage, and take the first step off of the bridge.