Run. Hide. Fight. After 17 to 18 years of growing up watching action movies and T.V. shows and reading dystopian novels where this way of life is the norm, seniors finally get the chance to play senior assassin, where students receive targets of people to shoot with water guns while also avoiding their assassins. While it may seem silly to be running around the streets of McLean with floaties and water guns for protection, these games actually teach kids a lot that can help them in the real world.

McLean is an extremely competitive school already, but these games teach kids a different type of competition that is not in terms of academics. Running around and playfully competing against people you usually can trust with your life displays that you can be independently competitive. Later on in life, competitiveness is an important quality to possess as it tends to increase one’s motivation to be better, therefore leading to their work to improve. It is also necessary for students to dive into competition earlier on so they can learn how to keep it healthy so that later on, for more important competition that is work-related, they can be mature but also try to win.

In the workforce, it is also very important to be careful—there can always be coworkers who go behind one’s back for the sole benefit of themselves. The senior assassin games teach seniors from a young age to be careful with who they trust, even if that means their own friends. There are friends in these games who genuinely want to make alliances, and other friends who fake it and help someone else or kill you themselves to further their progress in the games. This experience can be a reality check for students to always keep an eye open to anyone, which is a meaningful lesson to take into their professions.

Many teachers and parents do not like the idea of senior assassin because they argue that it distracts students from focusing on school. They do not like how students are going around school searching for their target to find what their car looks like, or what they look like themselves. However, every year, the organizers of the account ensure the games do not interfere with school hours—students even get a few minutes before and after school to walk to their vehicles in peace. Additionally, this can teach the seniors another crucial life lesson: be able to separate work life from fun.

There’s also no harm in seniors having one last hurrah together before parting their separate ways in college. After going to different colleges, it is likely that many seniors will never be as close with high school friends as they are now. The senior assassin games give one last chance to do something together, where everyone can have fun by either joking around or creating alliances. Additionally, this gives a chance for seniors to meet other seniors that they were not as close with as targets and assassins are chosen randomly, not based off of who is friends with who.

All in all, the games shall continue. Let these seniors have fun together, one last time. Let these seniors learn important lessons for the workforce. Let these seniors compete.