My Experience In High School

I would like to pretend that the bridge between elementary school and high school did not exist for me—that junior high just did not happen. I was a seemingly thoughtless kid, determined to make it out of school entirely and live in my own world where nobody could tell me what to do. I was awkward, irrational, and rebellious, three qualities I cannot thank my parents enough for dealing with. But the experiences and people I encountered in my junior high years almost made that whole chapter of my life worth reliving. I went through a lot in junior high, and have many memories of ridiculous instances that make it easy to make fun of myself.

It all started in middle school I got suspended a lot of times for arguing with my teachers. I would argue with my teacher about the smallest things such as talking while they were talking. It made me feel like they never understood why I talked all the time. I always tried to solve problems and most teachers didn’t agree. One time I disrespected my teacher and as a result I got sent to the principal’s office. Walking to the principal office I thought about how close my principal and I were. The walked seemed extra long because I would look back to see the small narrow hallway behind me. My principal understood me and always listened to what I had to say. Even though we were close I never wanted to face the consequences he gave me.

I watch from the beige colored sidewalk as my Ma pulls away in the Nissan Pathfinder that we dubbed as the ‘Blue Shoe.’ I turn and look up at the newly built building. There it stands in its newly built glory, the sun is rising behind the building and it seems to cast a halo effect on it. Little did I know it would be like Hell more than Heaven. It was my first year of going to a public school, I was a 6th grader this year, as I had been doing my schooling at home. With this came the ability to be a grade ahead because Ma said that I was to busy when I was younger.

Until the summer of my sophomore year, I was unquestionably shy. I was the kid whose raised hand lifted four inches off the table and who slouched over her sketches of strangers. That summer, I was forced to change.

In the summer of 2013, I received an email that changed my life forever. It was up to me to accept or decline the new journey that allowed me to be accepted into Edgecombe Early College High School. I decided to accept this new journey that was filled with 5 years of butterflies, hardships, new opportunities and self improvement.

High school started for me in August, and it was my freshman year. My arsenal of pens, pencils, and binders were ready to be used. Also, I purchased a burly backpack, chic clothes, and swaggy shoes. The school supplies were supposed to impress the teachers while the aesthetics were supposed to impress the girls. Only one worked out.

It was the beginning of a new cycle. Every year was similar to the last. I would wake up Monday through Friday at 7:30am despising my past self for staying up so late playing video games or watching videos. Then I would take a shower, eat breakfast, and be driven to school. Once summer break would begin and I would stay up all night and sleep during the day. Then near the beginning of the school year my anxiety would strike, from me thinking of meeting new teachers and knowing if I would have any friends in my classes. This day changed all of that in the blink of an eye. It was May 14th, 2017, the day of graduation.

Of all the things I struggled with while growing up, school wasn’t one of them. The classroom was like a second home to me; everything, from the sights (desks in neat rows, spotted multicolored linoleum), to the sounds (chalk against the blackboard, shrieks on the playground), and even the smells (a combination of glue, disinfectant, and wet paper towels) wrapped me in a cocoon of comfort and familiarity. I enjoyed doing assignments, and getting to know new teachers. Purchasing new school supplies felt like a second Christmas.

Sixth grade seem like a century ago, yet I still have vivid sometimes frightening memories of that wretched year. I still remember the day we learned about Idioms. How amazing it was to my sixth-grade mind that I could use these unusual phrases to describe what I was experiencing. Today I will use my most valuable sixth grade English skills and pair my favorite idiom to my experiences.

As I opened my eyes and allowed my posture to relax, I let out a long, deep breath. The Buddhist monk conducting the religious ritual made his closing remarks, and I was sent out of the temple, back into the sweltering heat of summer in Virginia. Because a scout is reverent, it was expected of me by my troop that I attend one religious ceremony during my time at the National Scout Jamboree. Leading up to the service, my 13 year old self was especially concerned that the experience would be long, boring, and uneventful. “Why should I have to sit in silence when I could be rock climbing or mountain biking?” I thought. After the ceremony, however, I was at peace. I found that I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. By the time my troop and I left the Jamboree, the culmination of my adventures started to awaken something within me.

Maybe it was the thought of what people felt about me, or the way I felt their glare on my back as I walked past a group of people. It could also have been the way that people stopped talking as I got closer to them and all that gave them away was the accusatory look in their eyes. The tables had turned suddenly letting me with no choice but to experience the way that other half lived. Living as a socially awkward student was difficult, but living amidst all the flying rumors was close to impossible. That fall was a life lesson that made me appreciate the friends I had and humbling me to see past the materialism that existed in the school to the vanity of it all.

At Holland Patent High School, I am a 17 year old girl, who has understood how foolish I used to be, how impactful high school truly was for me and my personal growth, and how much I’ve really changed. I have a new outlook on life, I am more confident, and I am overall so much happier. This identity I have of myself is a combination of every single person I used to be over the years at the middle school and high school. Today, I can walk the halls of Holland Patent understanding that the high school has become like a second home to me. I changed the way I would look at school and began to enjoy it so much more. I got closer to people around me, staff or friends, and I started to enjoy learning and the high school environment again.

In the late months of the two-thousand and fourteen first semester, I had begun my dangerous excursion into a precarious realm of stress and irritation to a juvenile network of literacy and instruction. I was beginning my first year of high school, which was still a new territory for me. I had previously attended at Howe middle school, but I was not prepared for high school. At my high school, the building is different than any other building on the campus. The high school building is on one continuous slab of the concrete foundation, but there is a gap in between the two halves of the building. In this gap, there is a connecting concrete flooring that is level with the two previous halves’ floors. The Howe students, faculty and I called this structure the “breezeway.” During a hot school day, the wind tunneled through the breezeway and brush across me like an ocean of cool air. Of all the memories in the breezeway at my high school, I can remember one moment where I saw something that changed my outlook on what I wanted to become.

In the summer vacation after sixth grade, I was ecstatic to become a student at Ball Junior High School. I wanted to meet new people, participate in extracurricular activities, and further my education. What I most desired was having a fresh start to school. After seven years of elementary school, everyone knew me as Angela, the so-called weird kid. Sometimes, the students would make fun of my voice, imagination, and sensitivity. No one at my school wanted to be friends with me. Even when a new student would transfer to the school, I would introduce myself in an attempt to befriend them. Word would get out and they did the same as the other students. As a result of that, I wanted to make new friends in junior high.

At first I thought high school was going to be a breeze, but was not a breeze at all. The classes seem very hard for me. I tried my very best even though I thought it was hard. I gave my freshman classes my all but still getting ok grades I wanted an A on my class work but I was not getting those grades. I felt like a big failure. So I started not to care I gave up really gave up. I started not doing my work and stop participating in class. I was skipping class not giving a care in the world. I kept getting into trouble. Always in the dens office and that was just my freshman year. My report card was really unacceptable I would cry when I see my grades but I know It’s because I would skip class and not do my work. Summer was coming up school is getting to an end and I got my report cards again and I see my GPA was so horrible and my guidance consul Mr. Martin called me down to his office to talk to me about my grades and that I’m starting freshman year all over again . He was telling me to get on track, it’s not the end of the world that I can still do it if I focused on my work. So I told my guidance consul Mr. Martin I would do my best.