My Last Day In High School

The week leading up the first day of high school I was really excited. I could not wait to see all my old friends and the ones I had made in the previous school year. I could not wait to get back into a daily routine. On the night prior to the first day I got a great nights rest. I was walking in confident that it was going to be a great day and a great overall year. I got to meet all my teachers and they all seem amazing. I can already tell that it is going to be a great year. I can already tell high school is going surpass middle school and elementary school by far. The amount of class options seem unending I can not wait to try psychology next year. I wish there was more room in my schedule so I could take more classes, or having an optional zero or eighth period so I could take extra classes. I know that I am on the path for success and it is my peers, teachers, and the Owen J. Roberts school district curriculum that helped is helping me walk down that path.

There I was in a foreign land, lodged in the seats of the cramped van as I pondered thoughts of my future. I was an eighth grader about to enter the arduous experience and intimidating environment of high school. I perceived visions of me struggling through the drudgery of work as well as events where I was given laudations for my witty ideas and prestigious accomplishments. Mixed emotions drowned my brain into a swamp of careless stress, but these were flushed as the abrupt stop of the car brought me out of my daydream. That day was a day I would remember forever, but I was just a child, unknown about what I was going to see.

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.

Who would have known traveling could be such a hassle? Especially when moving from Wilson, North Carolina to boring Goldsboro. Especially when having strict parents, an annoying sister, a spoiled brother and an innocent me stuffed in a van, just to move only 26.4 miles. Moving cannot be that dreadful, I tried considering to myself. Making new friends and memories are not the worst thing in the world. There was only one slight problem …school. It was fall of third grade and everything was different. From math to English to science, concepts were thrown at me that I was so sure that I had never seen at my previous school. So at first sight of trouble, I turned to my parents, but only to end up with a frustrated me and a very agitated mother.

It was soon the end of August which meant school was right around the corner. I wasn’t too excited, but I was a little anxious to see what God had in store for me. We hopped in the car, and were on the way. I walked into my new school, Country Day, and acknowledged the wind carried the sound of the chitter-chatter of my fellow classmates, lockers slamming as hard as nails and the howling of the spider-monkey. The halls were outdoor and you could see the never ending mountains and feel the gentle breeze swaying back and forth. I enjoyed the first day and couldn’t wait to go back for more. Throughout the day, I met someone special, someone who would soon to be my best friend, partner in crime, my other half, Sibley. She helped me see the good in situations and inspired me to be outgoing and carefree. Our families became best friends and went on adventure after adventure together. The year

Red lights, traffic lines, students walking or dragging, I could hardly tell. Today marks the day of my first day of high school without my best friend who may not connect to me blood-relatively but a family in my heart. I thought to myself, what if I can’t find any of my friends? What if I can’t find any of my classes? What if everything doesn’t turn out the way I want it to? Anxiety and panic roll in my body as soon as my mom stopped the car. I hesitated to open the car door, making little movements to even try to get out the car. I waved goodbye and shut the door closed so lightly that I think my mom had to properly shut it again. As I make my way to the front entrance with the gated black fence that shines so dimly, I looked up randomly at the sky, noticing that the clouds appeared very cloudy and immediately assumed that the rain will start sprinkling

Sadness, desperation, and the thought of failure plagued my brain as I went into my second day of Sophomore year in high school. I had grown to dislike school a lot as it felt like all the fun I used to have was slowing diminishing into nothing. As I walked to my next class, I looked down to make sure I had the right room number. I did, it was time for English which I was not looking forward to. But, to my surprise, this English class would change everything

My parents dropped me off at the front of the school while butterflies flew in my stomach. All I had wanted to do was run back into the car and slam the door shut, blocking out everything that was unfamiliar. But instead I took a deep breath and pushed open the doors. Everything had been so different than my old school, and I was scared if I would fit in enough. I walked down to the eighth grade hallway and another wave of dread washed over me. Everybody was in their groups, laughing and talking, just like I would have been if I was still back at my old school.

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.

​The morning was bright and the scorching Texas sun beamed down against my face as I stood frozen, my legs halted by the utter terror of entering this massive middle school and my heart broken by the fact that I recognized no familiar faces amongst the sea of students entering through the front door. The ones that I had fought with, grown with, and ultimately learned to love, the girls and boys that I had seen each and every school day since kindergarten were now five hundred miles away while I was alone, left here to conquer this unknown world on my own.

Walking to the bus stop that morning was difficult, but exciting at the same time. I was soon going to be at the high school for my first day. I knew that it was just an orientation, but I was still nervous. I don’t have any older siblings so taking my first step into the school was like a step in the dark, I had no idea what high school would actually be like. Little did I know that high school would change the way I view life, school, and grades.

I turned up the heat to make sure that the car would be warm by the time my sister stumbled down the front steps of King Philip Middle school. The Autumn air started to turn bitter, and leaves coated the ground so that you could not walk without a symphony of crunches rising from under your step. A gust of wind rushed by, and I was thankful for my car cocoon, which covered me from the coming chills. My hands fumbled with the radio, searching for a “good” song. I heard the bell ring, and watched as adolescents, streamed out of the school bundled up for one of the first times this year. My sister slid into the car, and with her came a gust of cold air.

It was the beginning of fall in Boston. My heart was full of excitement and relief. I had just transferred to a boarding school from a barbarous military school in south Texas. I had never been to New England; therefore, I was thrilled for a new adventure. The day before are first school day, Cushing Academy (my boarding school) had a parade for incoming students. I had made a few friends from football the week before during “pre-season”, so we all went to the parade that day.

Looming in front of me was something new, a fresh start. Despite being this, it seemed cold and trying, something that sent shivers down my spine. Mixed emotions of uncertainty and optimism had filled my first day of middle school; and as my final year is drawing to a close, I realize that this place-this transitional time in my life- is something that I never want to leave. I created a home away from home, and a family, over the short three years spent learning here. Each school year, from first to concluding, brought new experiences in which have altered my life. These are the things that I am hoping to carry over into high school-my next chapter. Every experience in which middle school has brought leaves me changed indefinitely, shaped for the future ahead.

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.