Personal Narrative: Growing Up In A New School

Now, here I am, a junior at Mineola High School, and I feel ready for whatever will come after high school. As I try to figure out what I want to do with my future, I now know how much I love travelling and people and hope my career includes that. Moving helped me see my flaws and strengths. It helped me recognize that I am sometimes too diffident and circumspect. While in Mineola, I managed to ameliorate my social skills enough to be voted by my classmates as “Class Favorite” and have also joined activities I normally would have been too shy to take part

I moved to the United States in 2003 to live with my mother who then resided in the country for five years. The thought of escaping the war in Monrovia was thrilling but I soon realized that my country’s war was not my only battle. After my arrival into America, I was faced with oncoming waves of challenges. The war had prevented me from attending school for two consecutive years. The knowledge I had was incomparable to that of my peers. My inability to speak English, along with the overwhelming burden of my native tongue made learning in a new American school difficult. I was a foreigner left to present my capabilities clearly through black lenses with no words spoken depicting that I came from a third-world country. I accepted these faults

Starting 6th grade at a new school was hard for me since I didn’t think people would like me or I wouldn’t fit in. This school was smaller than my last school because each grade only had 30 students, which wasn’t a lot compared to 100 students in my last grade. I made new friends and fit in perfectly because everyone was different. 6th grade was a disaster for me, since I wasn’t good at reading or writing and therefor I got bad grades. 7th and 8th grade were much better and I became closer to my friends. Whenever I hear “Viva La Vida,” I think about the time when my choir class performed this in front of the whole school. When I hear it in the car, I will sing to it and remember the good times in middle

After waiting eight extensive years in elementary school and middle school, I was finally going to go to a new high school. I felt extremely scared, it felt as if I actually had butterflies in my stomach. I was excited to go to the large new building but it almost looked too big.

Coming to a new school from a different city usually is a pretty nerve wracking experience, but Reece White, Junior, has fit into Topeka High like it’s no problem.

Being homeschooled until I entered the fifth grade, I probably wouldn’t keep the friends or the attitude I retain to this day. One quality you definitely would see if I didn’t transfer into public school is how shy I was. I wouldn’t have seen people the way I did, or acted around others the way I had. Had it not been for the journey of going from kindergarten to being homeschooled and finally to being in public school in the fifth grade, I would be someone completely different. I mean, my first day of school in kindergarten I stabbed another kid with a pencil for taking my lego block. But fifth grade became a whirlwind of new things, I didn’t even know about cliques at the time. When I got into public school is when I met Just-Ice (Justice) who has had that nickname since fifth grade. He and Leon were my only two friends back then. Leon and I underwent a falling out though and we stopped talking as much. But when sixth grade came around, I began to get to know Jesse and a good portion of my good friends today. Swapping school types again later on in life

I, as a K through twelve public school student, I went to three different school districts. I moved at crucial times for youth to make friends and establish themselves. I moved for eighth grade and twelfth grade, these movings made me learn I have to put myself out there and reach out to be part of a school and make a contribution.

Immediately after Thanksgiving break was a time that everybody dreaded the most: finals month. These were the last three weeks of the semester that were known as probably the most chaotic during the school year. When I was a freshman in high school, I didn’t stress much about it because in middle school, finals were much easier and a collective effort. We took almost all of our finals in April and we studied for all of them in all different classes. “Let’s work on some science,” my math teacher would say. It also wasn’t uncommon to hear my reading teacher say,” I’ll find some Algebra problems for us to work out.” This served as a great help during this time. Although, this would all change in high school.

I like playing with my friends and going to the mall and playing games. The kind of games I like are horror and adventure and two player and multiplayer games. People think I am emo, but i’m not I am very shy around new people and people I don’t know. It’s hard making new friends in a new school and district that I am new to! I didn’t even know I was moving to a different school it was almost time to go back to school. I never got to see the rest of Ralph Chanler looked like and see what I could of done there. This school isn’t like a middle school, plus you don’t learn stuff that you have to learn here. But at my old place you would learn about the stuff about your body and other stuff.

The memory that would remain with me until death would be, the first time I got bullied. My family had moved to a new place, which meant a new school and unfamiliar people for me. Life was awful and so many times I wanted to quit. I still have a vivid image of that incident. The bits I remember was that there were 2 girls in about grade 8 or 9 that would glare at me in such a peculiar way, that I would pee in my pants. After some time they would bump into me and drop my notebooks on the floor, saying I looked like an Asian and should go back and rot in China. But, that was not the end.

2017 is going to be the best year eve because I moved into a new town, Pulman, I will also go to Japan to see family and friends, and I will do is work on my goals.

I was walking down the hall, scared. The air conditioning blowing in my face like the wind during a hurricane. It was very cold and empty, I could not hear a peep from a student nor a teacher. The doors were closed and there was a black roll of paper covering the windows as if they were doing a lockdown drill. I found my classroom, room 42. The outside had many motivational posters, but it did not help. I was nervous, terrified, asking so many questions and I thought to myself, Should I just run away?

Over the years, I have attended many different schools, and have met many new, interesting people. Due to this, I have had to adapt to many new environments in Pennsylvania, and Colorado. At first, I often struggled with fitting in, while continuing to maintain my unique identity. However, practice makes perfect, and through the years, I have realized that all you need to do “fit in” is be yourself. This realization has given me much confidence in tackling problems that have arisen during my life, and has instilled the belief in me that anything is possible.

A change in scenery isn’t a problem for me, I’ve lived in four different states and and in Italy within my short seventeen years of life, change is all I know. My greatest skill would be my ability to adapt. I’m a military brat, and because my mom served in army, I have had to leave behind everything I knew and loved every three years. At first, leaving what grew to be my comfort zone would be heart wrenching. I felt like I had ran a marathon with others in the same situation as me and built strong and meaningful relationships with them, just for someone to hit the reset button and put me back at the starting line all by myself. After repeating this all throughout my years of school, I noticed that first days were no longer scary or intimidating;

Moving to a major city was arduous, I was an outsider, a loner and I was different. I said the word, "orange" oddly and my height and weight compared to the other kids made me blatantly separate. I answered every question in class until the phrases, "Bec stop answering questions, you'll confuse the kids,""Bec don't complicate things" and "Bec why don't you let somebody else explain that," became too familiar. I realized my thinking process was different and that all people were