In my school there is a wonderful tradition to celebrate “The last Bell” on the stage. No black-white dresses, no line-ups, no long official speeches and so on. School-leavers prepare the performance themselves, invite their friends and relatives. Everyone is invited to participate, because everyone has a talent. So for me it was maybe more exciting than school-leaving party!

When my Last Bell took place, I was very anxious and worried. I was very much afraid of failing my entrance examination. And I knew that if I failed, I would have to spend one year blaming myself for that and getting prepared for next-year exams. It was so pressing and difficult! And these thoughts came to me right with my Last Bell.

Well, I didn't think of anything of such kind.. The only thing I felt was that the atmosphere of adventure and surprise was vanishing and you can't get hold of it any more. You won't be sitting at the lesson chatting with your schoolfriends and waiting for the bell to ring. You won't have any subbontiks any more. You won't have duties in the cloakroom any more. You won't have a school register any more. A part of your life was creeping away and you couldn't do anything about it.

I started think about my entrance exams and also about the consequences of failing them only after having passed all my school exams. I knew what I wanted to do after school but I guess for me my last bell and also my school-leaving party were much more important that time. Well, maybe not so much important, but those were things that were waiting for me first.

I do remember that day. I suppose it is an exciting moment in life of every pupil. I think that was the day when I finally realised that my school life was getting over. And though my final exams were waiting for me, during that day I was a bit sad not because of them but because school is an important stage in our life: we met our first friends, our first love, learn many things, face our first, as we think, serious problems, and all those things finished, and were "left" in our schools, but they will always live in our memories.

I can say that I had almost the same thoughts in my mind...
For a school-leaver a school is a place where he has spent the better part of his life - 10 years! It's a place of "the first things": he comes across everything you've mentioned - friends, love, problems - for the first time, that's why school years are mostly associated not with studies but with learning of life. And the Last Bell of his childhood is the Fist Bell of his adulthood.

I do. Our funny childish dresses and silly dances. Tears in teachers' eyes.
Our first teacher made a stunning surprise to us all: she had kept our little essays that we wrote in the 1st form and read them to us.

Oh, it's a traditional part of any Last Bell celebration - dances and songs)))
Your teacher was a wise woman - she knew that the most valuable but at the same time the most fragile things are reminiscences about our childhood. So, she presented you with a piece of your childhood so touching...