A lot sure has happened since 2003. For those of you keeping track, that’s the year most of the guys and gals getting ready to graduate from Fountain Hills High School were dropped off for their first day of kindergarten.

In honor of this Friday’s commencement ceremony, I decided to take a look back and see what was going on in 2003.

This has been something of a tradition of mine over the past decade of writing for The Times and, while I hope that it’s fun for the seniors and their family to reminisce about where they were and what was going on around them 13 years ago, I think it serves as a nice reminder to the rest of us as to how far we’ve all come in that time, as well as how far we’ve still got left to go.

For you sports fans in the audience, 2003 was the year that the Florida Marlins won the World Series, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the Super Bowl and the San Antonio Spurs claimed the NBA championship. The Kentucky Derby was won by a horse named Funny Cide, in case you were curious.

Since reality television is just as popular as it ever was, many of you may remember that Jessica Simpson used to have a show called Newlyweds. In 2003, without a hint of sarcasm, she posed the eternal question: “Where do buffalo wings come from Chickens or buffaloes?” See, graduates? It’s never too late to learn something new.

You Lord of the Rings fans might be interested in knowing that 2003 was the year that the third and final film in the trilogy won 11 Oscars, sharing the nerdy spotlight with the completion of the Human Genome Project, which mapped the structure of our DNA.

Since all of you graduates were heading into kindergarten at the time, you’ll likely remember your favorite toys of the era over anything else. Apparently Yu-Go-Oh cards were really taking off in 2003, alongside Barbie dolls of both Supergirl and Wonder Woman.

While Frodo’s journey to (spoiler alert) destroy the ring of power proved successful in both the fantasy world and at the box office, you graduates were likely a bit more interested in the second and third top-grossing films of the year, Finding Nemo and the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

On television, your parents were probably really into American Idol, CSI, Survivor and the soon-to-end Friends.

While you probably weren’t listening to the top artist of 2003, Eminem, you’ve probably danced to a number of 2003’s top hits over the years, including “In da club,” and “Hey Ya.”

So, yeah, quite a bit has changed since 2003. Then again, folks are still watching Survivor and Finding Nemo finally has a sequel coming out this year. There are also 235 versions of CSI on TV these days and American Idol will finally be wrapping up as you get ready to graduate.

But that’s all in the past now. What’s interesting to me is where we go from here. The class of 2016 will have a say in all of our futures, and I’m excited to see what kind of world they will help to create. It’s a big responsibility, but I’m sure they’ll give it their best effort.