Original Writing : Moving Away

Growing up in Chicago, I attended a neighborhood school from preschool through first grade. Although it was an exceptional school for elementary kids, the education for middle school and high school students was not as adequate. Seeking a better place to raise their children, my parents were faced with a tough choice. When I was in 2nd grade, our family made the decision to move to the suburbs. On July 3rd, we all packed into our Honda minivan and drove 45 minutes to a new home in the town of Winnetka. Within my first year at Crow Island, my new school, I learned so many new things. I started playing the violin and speaking Spanish, neither of which were offered at my old school. I met my best friends that I'm still close with now. Over the

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.

In 2014 of October I moved to Georgia from Florida. I was leaving a place I had been living in my entire life. It was a tough situation as I knew moving to a different state and school could be difficult. I was very nervous as it was a new environment with different people and new types of school work. I was worried about not making friends or getting bad grades. That morning of school my heart raced. When I arrived at school I met new people and my teachers, I also figured out which teachers were bad and what teachers would be good. I left school that day very happy knowing I would have a great year. Later that week I started to become more familiar with the grading systems, behavior system and connections. at my old school they were called

Being a freshman, in a new school, a new city, even a new state, frightened me going into my first day of school as a high school attendee. Chaparral High School in Phoenix, Arizona was considered to be the top high school in the state of Arizona, however it sure was not for me. There was an ample amount of kids who believed they were better than the kid next to them because of the money their parents possessed. This characteristic began to grow on me; without my own awareness. Furthermore, I began to talk back to my parents, acted as a terrible brother to both my two younger brothers who looked up to me, as well as, my friends back in El Paso, Texas did not even want to talk to me. I had become a monster in all my friend’s eyes.

Walking into Booth Middle School on the first day of seventh grade, all I wanted was a friend. I cared little about whether they would make an impact on my life; as a newcomer to Peachtree City, I was open to befriend anyone. Within the first week, I met Annabelle. I was so preoccupied with the excitement of having a new friend that I was unaware of how greatly she would impact not only my first day, first week, or first year of middle school, but how vastly she would affect my future.

When we all came outside for a picture and we sang the school song for the last time, I knew that I would remember that day as possibly the best and worst day of my life. Losing the school was an immense blow and it still hurts to think about it. I had such incredible relationships with my peers and my teachers that I feel like I will never be able to recapture. The decision was made to consolidate with North Posey—the biggest rival New Harmony had ever known. The prospect of transferring to a school many times larger, of walking in that first day not knowing hardly anyone, it terrified me. Now that two years have passed and I have started my senior year at North Posey, I recall that shy, reserved girl and I do not recognize her. It is difficult to connect with who I used to be at New Harmony, tantamount to looking at a different person. I have new friends and am taking challenging courses. I have made accomplishments in the past year alone—like staying at a veterinarian camp by myself for a week—that are still surprising

My Father is an Air Traffic Controller in the military and he had been given word that he had been given orders to move from Elmendorf AFB in Anchorage, Alaska to Eglin AFB in Niceville, Florida in two months. I remember when my parents told me that we were moving. I was sitting in the living room with my sister when my Dad and Mom came and joined us to break the news. Once they sat down I could tell something was wrong, I could feel my heart racing and the temperature rising. Once they said the words, “we are moving to Florida” I could feel my heart sink because that meant going to a new school, new friends and no more spending time with my family. Alaska was my home and I never thought we would leave. I was scared for what the future held, but I had no idea that it would make such an impact on my life and shape me into the person I am today.

This tore through my memory every time I closed my eyes. The sympathy in Mrs. Jones’s expression, the lump rapidly growing in the back of my throat as I sprinted through my middle school’s long hallways, but what wakes me up every night is the look on my mother’s face, the painful swelling of her sobbing eyes. That is what kills me inside, what makes me feel like collapsing and never getting back up again. My mother was never the same. She stopped talking. She stopped working. Then something changed in her attitude. She remarried some rich southern gentleman and we moved to the French Quarter in New Orleans to one of those stereotypical southern homes. I was enrolled in The Quartier School, a prestigious school with old buildings from the 1800s or something like that. The grounds were huge so it would take forever to walk back a fourth from class to class. I hated it.

So before I was a resident of Delaware I was born and Raised in Southern California, had lived there all my life and I have an abundant amount of friends and family. My father decided we needed and change so we jumped on a plane at the end of the summer, here we were new to this life, I have to admit I love the outdoors and love the culture and atmosphere of Delaware but not knowing anyone was really difficult. I mean we had some family out here but it wasn’t like home and it defiantly took some time to get used to. When it was time for school I was defiantly scared to say the least. I remember walking to the first day of school like it was yesterday, I was scared to show up to a new school not knowing anyone it was one f the worst feelings

“Can we talk about moving to Minnesota?”, my father would ask. “I don’t want to, ” I’d always responded. This lasted for four years, my father always looking towards the future, my future, but never willing to press me towards the opportunities he saw. I had friends, an expansive yard where I could play, take pictures, observe the wildlife, a quaint home in a quaint neighborhood attending a quaint school in northern Mississippi, and each time the question came up, a feeling of fear welled up as I thought about how different it would all be, really the complete opposite: a rural home to a suburban apartment, a school with fewer than a thousand students for grades K-12 to one quadruple the size, a world with friends, one without. Eventually, after my eighth grade year, I let in to my father and allowed logic to clear the emotions that

     Once my family and I arrived at our new house I was still very saddened because of the move and had trouble not getting mad at my parents. Summer went bye like it wasn’t even there and by the time school started I was very depressed. The new school I was going to was Naperville North High School which was about ten times the size of my old school in Pennsylvania in size and in the number of students. In my school in Pennsylvania there were about twelve students in each class, here the number runs around thirty two. The school building was so big I had a lot of trouble getting to class on time let alone finding them in the building. The school wasn’t what I was bothered by the most because it was the fact that I didn’t have any social life and I was a social person. There were a lot of different groups of people at my new high school, it was tough for me to fit in and meet new people. Everyone just knew me as the new kid and didn’t even bother to find out what my real name was. The first

As school begins at a new institution, exuberance flows through your veins, and you skip towards a sea of new faces. Stares of disgust penetrate through you as if you have wronged these individuals by being in their presence. Far from the expected, you brush the feeling of anguish off and decide to walk up to a group of friendly looking individuals. You manage to put your left foot in front of your right just three times before the group recognizes the attempt of involvement, and opts to disperse as if being pulled away from you by a riptide. Surrounded my hundreds of new faces, never have you felt so lonely. Knowing none of this is because of your personal actions, but those of your parents, you feel drowned in a sea of grief.

Fear, anxiety, disappointment, these feelings were racing through an 11-year-old boy as he anxiously started to think about the rather frightening couple of weeks that he had ahead of him, and what this boy was going through is an experience that most people go through at some point in his life. This young boy was leaving all his friends, and is moving to a new home; and in 2011 this young boy was me. I moved to the small town of Troy in Virginia from a town called Wise in North Carolina in August 2011, and this happened less than a week before the county school system was scheduled to come back from summer vacation. When school started I was forced to take on the task of settling into a new community and school system. and I had to do this

For most kids this is one of numerous things they don’t want to hear. Not for me I was ecstatic about the treacherous thing that happens when you move . . . A new life. I didn’t care about abandoning my school or friends because I had all E’s and no friends. That was back in Colorado, now I’m in high school at Higginson, New York. It’s all because of one person, Alison Sprayer. That was all behind me, or so I thought. Until one morning all of that changed.

It was a Thursday night in the middle of March, as I pull into the school parking lot. I can see that there are mounds of suitcases and over stuffed duffle bags lined up on the faint lit sidewalks. I jumped out of the car with eagerness when I saw my friends waiting for me by the curb line. We leap with joy because; we knew that this was going to be one of the best trips of our final year in high school. The trip meant so much to us; we needed to be away from stress filled environment that is known as school.