Features

Seniors Leave Their Mark

Seniors embrace their creative sides and decorate their parking spots.

Anika Sanka, Co-Editor-in-Chief

September 17, 2025

Seniors Heath Berman (’26) and Audrey Coleman’s (’26) matching parking spots.

On Saturday Aug. 30, at a bright and sunny 8 a.m. Robinson seniors dragged themselves out of their beds and set out to leave a lasting (for the year) mark on the school: painting their parking spot. Students spent their morning hunched over paint rollers and brushes, transforming their assigned rectangles of asphalt into personal canvases.

The opportunity to paint your spot was available last year, but with little advertisement few took Robinson up on it. This year, there is an increased excitement for painting a coveted spot leading seniors to undergo the process to design and paint your spot either last Saturday or on the next painting day Sept. 20.

Students must pay $20 for a parking pass along with $30 in fees to paint your spot, not including the costs of buying the paint and supplies. Although a costly and lengthy process, many seniors believe the benefits outweigh the costs.

“I wanted to paint my spot to do something fun for senior year, to commemorate how it’s my final year and I also wanted to always have a spot that I can park in without having to fight other people from my parking spot once the parking lot gets busier later in the year,” Heath Berman (’26) said.

Seniors leaned into their creative sides coming up with personal and unique designs for their custom spot, even pulling out tape measurers and doing calculations to make sure their design comes out perfectly.

“So, I had a lot of ideas in terms of what I might want to do, but ultimately I wound up doing a book of mine that I read when I was little and was pretty important to me. It’s called Ladybug Girl, but also just in my family, like my nickname is Ladybug so it works pretty well,” Paige Brigman (’26) said. “I did the first day [of painting], but I have to go back to do the second one because I wish they gave us more time to do it. I spent the entire time, I think it was 3 to 4 hours, painting, which wasn’t too hard. It just needed to be longer.”

Customizing your spot leaves lots of opportunity for creativity, with some opting for more simple solid designs while others paint album covers, characters and quotes.

“My friend Audrey and I did like two parking spots, all coordinated around the album cover for “The Spins” by Mac Miller because it’s a song that we’ve been listening to since freshman year, and it holds a lot of good memories for us. It also ties into the theme of graduation, so it seemed perfect,” Berman said.

Painting your parking spot can be a long and tedious process, but for seniors it’s one of the final ways to make Robinson truly their own.

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About the Contributor

Anika Sanka, Content Co-Editor-in-Chief

Anika Sanka is a senior at Robinson High School and is the co-editor-in-chief (EIC) of the Knight Writers. This is her third year on staff. In her freshman year, even though she wanted to be on newspaper, she chose to do an AP elective. The following year, she joined the newspaper after being recommended to it by her cousin, Vikram Sambasivan, a former EIC of the Knight Writers. “I really wanted to do an elective that wasn’t an AP just to boost my GPA, but something I could actually do something in. I also wanted to improve my writing,” Sanka said. Being an EIC this year, Sanka has many goals for the newspaper as a whole. One of them is to earn an All-Florida award from the Florida Scholastic Press Association. “I think we are very capable of it. I’m honestly so happy I am EIC now,” Sanka said. “I now have the position and ability to implement things so we can be a really be a well-structured newspaper and win these awards.” Outside of newspaper, Sanka enjoys spending time playing sports. She is on the varsity track team, but she also likes to find time to play other sports as well. “In middle school, I did rowing for a while; that was fun, but I just wasn’t the best at it. I always found my way back to running. I love track. I love our community, and I love the team. I’ve also been dancing for a while. I like doing sports and activities like this just for fun,” Sanka said. When Sanka isn’t running or working, she enjoys spending free time watching 2000s movies with friends. In addition, Sanka doesn’t have a particular favorite music artist, but her favorite music genres are pop, rock and indie. “[My favorite movie is] ‘She’s the Man.’ It’s a 2000s movie, and it has Amanda Bines in it, and I just love her movies. The 2000s are just so good, and they are comfort movies,” she said. Being a senior, Sanka wants to go to Emory University in Atlanta or the University of Florida. She wants to study law or journalism “It [Emory University] is beautiful, it has nature, and cool extracurriculars. I want to go into law or journalism; something in the English and communications field. They have cool political science programs which I want to go into,” Sanka said. (Profile by Allison Bartlett)