The Moment I Stood Up for Myself

August 15, 2013 was the date that I entered high school. I had high hopes for the upcoming high school years to be my best years ever since I was in sixth grade. I expected that I can make more friends, join more club activities, and can choose classes that I really like. Although I was very enthusiastic and eager to start the all new school years, I also had a lot of worries and confusion about it also. The night before I start my freshmen year, the thoughts of failing classes, and be able to graduate high school kept

The first year of middle school was a year of transition into a new world. I would be going to a new school and enhance my life academically and on a social level. Looking back at that year isn’t so pleasant. My new self today, sucked in numerous amounts of life lessons that contradict the person I was in sixth grade. Sixth grade was all about fitting in for me. I just wanted to be part of a crowd and be known. I didn’t care about my academics at the moment. However, I was lucky enough to be educationally talented and not get to astray in the learning environment. Personally, sixth grade was too overloaded with drama and the drive to be high in the social rankings. If I traveled back to sixth grade, I’d sucker punch myself for getting

My transition into high school was as easy as taking a breath. I had always found school quiet easy and I never had to put much effort into getting promising grades. Before high school I had my whole life figured out, or at least I thought I did. I had planned that I would attend a law school or major in English. After a while of being in high school I started to realize many things. My parents did not have the financial stability to send me to a law school, I was not as smart as all the other kids, little by little I began struggling with a negative mentality about myself and my future. I slowly let go of my dream of becoming a lawyer and decided to join the Health Careers Academy. Soon enough, I began to have a deep interest in the medical field but then again I continued to have the same question; how can I afford going to a medical school? I did not know much about college or what it took to get into college. I assumed I just had to have a pretty transcript and that was all it took. My self confidence began to lower as I saw how other students cruised through their high school years so effortlessly. I never wanted to ask for help because I did not want to seem “dumb”. I would bite my tongue and hold in all the unanswered questions I had. My junior year, I was having a very difficult time. I had a tight schedule which consisted of almost all AP or honors courses. I slowly began to give up because I did not believe that I could do it. I let my grades slip failing almost

Until recently well this Sunday the 15th of May, when the high schoolers really did come to play baseball with us in our Babe Ruth league. This is the moment that I transitioned into wanting to go to high school. I knew two of the high schoolers already; Sean & Dylan, as they’ve played baseball with me before, but I didn't know Lance, Maxx, and John. Lance seemed like one of the high schoolers I envisioned, mean, grouchy… the way you see prisoners… After I got to talk to him I realized he was the same way as was used to, nice, funny, and hyper. John is that super tall guy that we're all scared of, yet again I was wrong, he turned out to be one of the nicest people i've ever met. Maxx was the last person I got a chance to talk to, he seemed shy but he was almost exactly like me, he was nice, funny, lively, clumsy… all of the above. They we're the opposite of what I imagine high school to be like. Nothing negative has come from meeting the new people so far, and we can all affect each other in a positive way. After that Sunday double header I’ve wanted to go to high school and forget middle school. It would be a moment to make new friends and think about what i'm going to do in the

After years of harassment, I concluded that the only way to end this torment was to change myself. I deepened my voice and regulated my actions, concealing the qualities that made me, me. For a while, it worked; the bullying had ceased, and I eventually fit in. However, after eighth grade, after I had finally managed to

It was all downhill from elementary school. No, my grades didn’t drop and I didn’t become a street rat, but socially, junior high single handedly ruined my social life. But from before I even stepped foot on the premises, I was destined to an awkward, mute, and sidelined three years: seventh grade, eighth grade, and freshman year. My elementary school, Central Road, was made up of two groups of kids, those who would go to Carl Sandburg, and those who would go to Plum Grove; and my tight knit group of friends would be cut in half when it came time for the split. Although there was more than 100 students who would be moving on to one of these schools, I was one of only 20 who would be attending Plum Grove starting in the fall. Of course, my

In 7th grade I was unfocused, unprepared, and childish. I didn’t know my grades would have an impact on my high school career. I thought everything that happened in middle school stayed in middle school so I focused on useless drama. I used to blame my C’s on bad teaching but now I realize I have no one else to blame but myself. I was the one coming to school unprepared to work not my teachers. Now I know all of my grades count. I have blossomed into a person I am proud of. This year I’ve made it my mission to actually pass not just get by. I now sit promptly in the front of the class and take notes. I focus on test scores and grades not drama that’s not even going to matter next week. I now know what’s important and what I should just leave

Walking into school on my first day of high school, I felt out of place. My face covered in acne, my teeth covered in braces, and the callicks in my hair stuck up through the abnormally thick layer of hair gel that coated them. My middle school social anxiety still ruled over me as I could barely speak with any member of the opposite sex. Yet, I still had an odd confidence about me. I had always been one of the best students in my class, even without ever studying for a test. I viewed high school as a slight uptick from the curriculum I had easily passed in middle school. I was wrong. High school exists as a microcosm of society, in which I originally failed to acclimate myself to the challenges posed to me in a setting of increased

The beginning of high school is the start to the next four years of hell. No one wants to be there. Everyone says, “these will be the best four years of your life!” Along with, “it goes by so fast,” and, “in the blink of an eye,” but the truth is, I don’t see it. Every waking moment I have to sit through a lecture in a cold, solid, chair is like sitting silently next to your parent in a car as they scold you for what you’ve done. You can’t go anywhere, or say anything. You just have to embrace it.

The beginning of the year wasn’t exactly as I envisioned as an eighth grader. I thought that going to high school would be some life changing experience with new people and more privileges. It turned out that it wasn’t that life changing so much as perspective changing and there was more work, more stress, and privileges tend to come with a price. My first day left me nervous, lost, confused, stressed, overwhelmed, and tired by the end of the day. The first thing I did when I got home that day

There is a certain potent quality to the transition between middle and high school; many make it through this transition. I apparently, wasn’t good enough for that transition, and I didn’t get in. I also didn’t even apply for the spot, so this not getting in thing made no sense to me on the first day. However, later on, I discovered that it mattered a lot more than I had first thought. Mostly because it basically sealed my fate for the rest of my life. Suffice to say, I am the single unluckiest person in this whole school. Unrivaled by anyone, I win the nonexistent title by a landslide every single year. And I absolutely hate it. But don’t be mistaken, it’s not that I don’t enjoy being alone, I absolutely do, it’s just that they constantly tease me for it like I actually care. And everyone should know by now that I don’t care. Aside from school, I really have no reason to unhappy. But that’s just it, I am always unhappy. And maybe that’s why the kids at school pick on me so much. Either way, life has dealt me a pretty pathetic deck of cards. And today is no different from any other day, it’s exactly the same. I wake up with a frown on my face, completely and perpetually uninterested in every little thing that I have to do that morning. I weave around my family, all bustling and happy, half-asleep and all smiles. And then I drive to school. A school surrounded by trees and fog. It was as gloomy as my mind was. And so I get out of my car. And then I go to class. And then the

January 2015, there was a girl who was living in a home filled with fighting causing the tension in the air to be so thick you could cut it with a knife. Being the ripe old age of 15, and being a pastor’s kid, this girl, having only ever known parents who lived together and experienced a seemingly happy life, quickly had to adjust to a life the exact opposite. This girl had to learn to live with her parents at two different addresses, her dad changing professions, not seeing her brother all the time, and hours upon hours of counseling. Within the past year or two, I have had to grow tremendously as a person. As a teenager, we are supposed to be confused with who we are and high school is the time that we are supposed to start finding ourselves,

Before I lost my innocence I was care-free, and full of love. But I grew up and my peers began to tease me. “Am I really fat, ugly, stupid and dorky”? I thought. Every loving part of me was torn apart piece by piece by my young peers like wolves on the prowl. Every fault and every flaw I owned was brought to my attention. This teasing spawned an anger in me so strong that every aspect of my life was destroyed. I began to rebel towards any kind of authority as a way to protect myself. I felt that every breathing thing was out to hurt me.

Today, I expeirecned the unthinkable. I 've had my share of being bullied and, though I am not proud of it, I have also had my share of being the bully.

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.