Hastings Narrative

To many freshman the first day of high school is the opening chapter of a new novel, a fresh start to a sometimes embarrassing middle school experience we would all just love to erase from our memories. August 13th, 2012 was the beginning of my four year long narrative at Cypress Bay High School. Despite my desperate desire to grow up, become an adult, and move far away from my parents for college all that did not seem possible because I had never previously attended a public school. I was struck with fear that I would not be able to adjust to the fast pace dynamics of a large high school.

I was about to face my greatest challenge in my new life. How to fit in with people in middle school. Arriving in America was already hard to adjust, what more can it be with my school life. It was in August when my school started. I was already nervous, and I haven’t even step foot from this mysterious school that I’m about to spend 2 years of my life.

Have you ever felt like everyone in the class is looking at you? That was me in 8th grade, the new kid, not only to the school but to the country. My family and I had just moved from Germany to Columbus, Georgia, it was a big change in all of our lives. I sat in that class with not an a sliver of an idea of what I was doing, where I was going, or how I was going to survive this year. My shoes were not exactly the most stylish, neither were my clothes, Germany was not exactly the most fashionable country, so why would I be, I had lived there for 12 years of my life, I was 12 at the time. My teacher was Mr. Kahlouch, an old grouchy man that I would learn to not like even more as the year passed, but today he would make me stand up and introduce myself to a class where it seemed every student had already produced their own clique. I told myself that I would be okay, that it wasn’t a problem, and thought of the old cliché, “picture everybody naked.” I was ready, I walked up to the front of the class took a deep breath and went, “Hi my name is…” I woke up about an hour later, I had passed out in front of everyone in my new class at my new school, in this new country.

I walked around unsteadily all day like a lost baby, far away from its pack. Surrounded by unfamiliar territory and uncomfortable weather, I tried to search for any signs of similarities with my previous country. I roamed around from place to place and moved along with the day, wanting to just get away and go back home. This was my first day in the United States of America.

It was the year 2008, I had just graduated from St. Michael’s School located in Los Angeles, CA. This year was quite exhilarating for me also scary because I was going to attend an all-girls high school. Los Angeles was my birth place also a place where I called home. One day, I came home to hearing my parents talking about moving to Mississippi. I remained devastated, not only we were moving to the south, I’m moving away from childhood friends. I was worried I wouldn’t see them again and I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to make new friends in Mississippi.

No words had ever sounded sweeter. More detention equals less time at home. Less time at home equals less time seeing my drunken step father. Mr. Curtis started talking as the students opened their notebooks. I opened mine, pretending to write. This is my life, no good, bad ass, social outcast, Nathan Smith. By being a social outcast, I've never really attracted much female attention. Not that it bothered me. This senior year, I planned to finish and get out as quickly as possible. After senior year was over, I would be on my way to college. College would be my escape

As the story goes, it was my first day as a freshman at Poplar Bluff High School. As I stepped off the bus to my new school, I found myself unfamiliar and nervous. My first instinct was to find my friends on such a wide campus, but, class would be starting soon so I wouldn’t have time. “Guess I will just get to my first class early”, I thought to myself while walking in the shivering, cold weather.

“I’ve told you a hundred times already you’re not getting a gun!” Mary scolded Morgan, her face reddening, and her eyes narrowing in frustration at having to repeat herself to him over and over again. She then dropped her Marlboro to the ground extinguishing it under her foot. “You see that, that’s what I think of your hopes of you ever get your hands on a firearm are. There’s all your hopes, squashed under my foot.” She continued bitterly as she ground the cigarette butt further into the pavement for dramatic emphasis.

I walk in with my heart rate skyrocketing, and stomach is churning. It’s a new start to my sophomore year. That is what I need, a place where no one knows me or what I have done. I walk into the office to get my locker number and schedule. “Hi, I, uh am here for my schedule.” The lady at the desk gave me a strange look “Oh you’re the new kid Philip right?”. I nodded, I hate when people call me Philip it makes me sound like an old guy, like old people are nice but I’m not old, now I feel bad for old people. “Alright deary here you go.” She smiles while handing me my combo and schedule. “Thank you.” I walk out and head to the my first class. I walked to my class, I was standing in front of the door to scared to open it, I’m just so nervous what if no one likes me. I decided to open it and within a second all eyes were on me, but only one stood out. They belonged to this boy who had a fringe like mine and eyes that can make anyone melt. “Class this is the new student Philip” the teacher said taking my attention off the boy, “Oh ya hi, but I go by phil not Philip, sorry it just sounds like a

It was nothing like I had seen in the movies. I wondered what people thought of me and what was being said about me. I appreciated every person that made an attempt to welcome me, but seeing that it was such a small school, I knew I would be the topic of people’s conversations for the next few days as more and more people heard about the infamous “new girl.” I considered the thought that the students there had all grown up together and known the same faces all of their lives. That explained why everyone already had their cliques. Apart from impressions and reputations, I wondered what opportunities I was going to encounter here and where they would take me in

It was August and school was just around the corner. I was going to be a freshman that year. It wouldn’t be too bad if I hadn’t just moved to the west side of Cleveland. Once again, I was going to be a new kid, but I guess we all were because we were freshmen. Later I found out that the school I would be attending, John Marshall High School, was a 9th grade academy. They separated us from the upperclassmen because the High School wasn’t big enough. Construction workers were in the process of building the new high school that year, so that grades 9-12 could be together. We were placed in an old middle school, it sucked! I wanted the real high school experience, but in this situation, I still felt like a child.

During my freshmen and sophomore years of high school I began to become frightened, high school was much tougher than middle school, the competition was troublesome, and certainly building new friendships had no time on my calendar. I didn’t fit in the teen society, and so I grew up to believe that I had excluded myself from that society and decided that my thoughts, intentions, circumstances, even goals were different from theirs.

You walk through the halls of your junior high school one last time. Every memoire seems as if it’s shooting at you all at once. First boyfriend, great teachers most of all though great friendships. We are starting our life if we know it or not. Everything will change. This summer I’m determined to get my glow up. Having so many friends you see how they’ve changed and yet here I am, still the same me I was my first year here. Nothing's changed except maybe my face blew up. Fun right, haha yeah it’s great.

The first year, the time to prove myself had arrived. Classes, rooms, teachers, and some students were unfamiliar. Eventually, minutes melted into hours, hours to days, and days to weeks. It didn’t take long before my schedule was routine, something of second nature. Humor and happiness were found in the form of my advisory family, where school was transformed into something more than going through the same motions of day to day activity. By the closing point of sixth grade, I was having a hard time letting go of what I’d adapted to. “What’s wrong?” my dad asked when I was getting into the car after being picked up early on the last day. I explained how distressed I was that my first year of middle school exceeded my expectations, and that it had to come to an end. Although his outlook viewed my reason for sorrow as trivial, I didn’t.

It was 2016, and I was finally a senior in high school. Being a senior in high school was something that I had dreamed of since my early middle school days, and at last, I was there. It was the last year in one of my least favorite environments, and I couldn’t wait to graduate and move away from the only place I had ever known. I had lived in the same town for seventeen years, and I had gone to the same school with the same people for thirteen years. I was looking forward to something new in my life. I was most excited for my senior year because it was the year that I was going to choose where I wanted to move away to and what school I wanted to spend the next four years of my life at. As the year moved along, I slowly realized that I wasn’t moving away and that I’d be staying home to attend college, which was one of the most difficult decisions that I ever had to make.