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All good things come to an end and so do school and college. Within a month or two, a number of students will be graduating from their educational institutions and be moving on to another phase of their lives. 
Which is why they are planning in meticulous detail, the‘precious memories’ they’d like to carry along with them. This year, for their summer holidays, a lot of them are chalking out plans for ‘last-time’ journeys, trips, movies and other fun things they’d like to do together for the last time before they finish up with this phase of their life and go on to other things.
From going on long joy rides to visiting their schools and teachers, they are selectively — and sentimentally — choosing activities whose memories they’d like to cherish for years to come. 
In fact, these youngsters say that after going to college, they wouldn’t get time to meet their school buddies as often and so they want to do it now.
Sandhya Shivakumar, a 17-year-old student says, “It is fun to be able to look back on such nice memories after you step out of school. When we go to college, we know we’ll get another set of friends, but school friends are the ones who are always close and are remembered, as we have grown with them for years. So we ensure that we do everything together for the last time — like a get-together with our whole batch, last tour, trips, etc. As we do during exams, we go for sleepovers at a friend’s place. Since this is the last year, we are planning a special sleepover night.” 
A few Class 12 students are planning the trips and get-togethers now, since they could get busy with their projects later on. Ashwin. R., a Class 12 student, plans on going for a long drive with his friends. He says, “After I finish school I don’t know how much time I can spend time with my friends. So my friends and I are planning to go for a long trip and explore a few new places we haven’t been to before. I’m sure it’s going to be a fun ride.”
Students also take pictures of the get-togethers and dole out framed copies to everyone in the group as a souvenir. Says Karthik. K, a first-year engineering student, “When I was in school, we did ‘last-time’ trips like travelling to Kerala, visiting our favourite restaurants, going to the nearby park where we’d often sat and chatted. They were golden memories of school. In fact, we clicked a few pictures in all those places and kept them as mementoes.” Karthik says he still has those pictures.
Parents aren’t stopping their kids from embarking on these sentimental journeys, aware that it will be for the last time. Says Guna Ravikumar, a homemaker, “My son wanted to go for a week-long trip to Goa. I let him go as it is his last year in this school and he wanted to go out with his friends, knowing he wouldn’t get a similar opportunity in future.”

Age Correspondent