LOS ALAMITOS, CA – You’re sitting on the beach with your friends, Mac DeMarco is playing off in the distance, and the sun is slowly setting. People are jumping off the pier, a watermelon is passed around, and tons of laughter fills the air. It’s the end of your senior year and you’re enjoying the last moments you have as a 2024 senior. This is Senior Sunset. 

At the beginning of the year, seniors celebrate Senior Sunrise, which signifies the beginning of the school year. The fresh start of the last year in their high school career. At the end of the year, Senior Sunset is celebrated. This is more of a celebration of being done with high school, as it marks the end of the year for the graduating seniors. It’s the end of the chapter and time for a new beginning. 

This year, Senior Sunset was held on Friday, March 24, which was also seniors’ last Friday of high school. We were all told to meet on the North side of the pier in Seal Beach, and that’s exactly what 100 others and I did. The group that I went with decided to get some pizza from Slice of New York on Main Street before sunset. After that, we headed down to the beach. I saw tons of my classmates and friends from school and chatted with them for a little bit. To be honest, it was weird to see some of my school-mates outside of school. 

Senior Sunset was kind of like a party on the beach, but it was really chill. We all just vibed together and had fun. There was music playing in the background, and tons of laughter. One of my friends was walking around with a watermelon that he bought from a vendor a couple of hours before and, to be honest, it was one of the best watermelons I’ve ever had. I sat with some of my friends and watched the sun go down, and at the same time, we watched some people jump off of the pier and into the water. I was sitting there, freezing my butt off on dry land, so I don’t even want to know how cold that water was. Some other students took photos with each other, played games like Uno or Spikeball, and one group even brought out the light sabers and had a full-on battle. 

A little while after the sunset, lots of students left and went on with their nights. Some went to an afterparty or In-N-Out, and others went home. My group of friends and I decided to walk Main Street and eat dessert at the end of the pier. We talked about random things and lived in the moment. We went back down to the beach and talked more about our senior year and how it feels now that it is ending. 

“Senior sunset was truly a bittersweet moment. It’s the last Friday ever of high school and that’s something really special to me because I feel like my whole life, I’ve always looked forward to Friday nights and going to In-N-Out after games, and that’s never going to happen again, [so] it’s a good thing though that we get to celebrate an ending to such a new beginning,” said senior, Savannah Burke. 

All in all, Senior Sunset was fantastic. Everyone came together to celebrate, and everyone left with their own stories. Senior Sunset will be a different story for every senior, with a different perspective, which I think is beautiful. This year’s Senior Sunset was a great end to the year.