The last time I remember something as huge as starting in high school was having to move to Oregon from Alaska, but for better or for worse, here I am, attempting to make my mark on this big blue Earth. However, Highschool was never always just peaches, cream, rainbows and unicorns. If I’m to be one hundred percent honest here, I was legitimately terrified of it, whether it be the totally reasonable fear of being stuffed into a locker by a bully or getting lost in a labyrinth of corridors and passages of infinite classes and broom closets.
But those fears never truly emerged up until the final days of freedom that remained from my graduation of 8th grade. As the days drew nearer, so did my fear reaching the brim of a breakdown. I was scared, petrified, you name it, there was no real escape from this irrational phobia. Other numerous things I was drop-dead scared of was making a good impression on my instructors or that they would be more strict that a Boa, or all of the people who went there before, who I would still consider my friend, my acquaintances, my enemies, and so on.
As time dragged on, I looked to my friends for advice to make my anxiety dissipate or at least vent to, but they all gave me that same answer… “It’ll be fine, you’re overthinking it too much, calm down, everything will be okay”. I was not having that as a comforter, because I was set that high school was going to be the single worst thing to have ever happened to me. I may or may not have taken influence from TV, Movies, etc. but the fear was there and it was real.
As it came to the week before the first day, me and my Mom went to the store and loaded up on school supplies, new shoes, clothes and a new hoodie. All of that was pretty darn awesome, I must admit, and at that point, I had calmed down at that point, but that does not mean I wasn’t scared out of my skin. I had trouble sleeping those days before that, and it only got worse, and all i really could do to try and remedy it was try my best to get back to sleep, but usually to no avail.
When the time eventually dawned that I had to step outside the warm comforting arms of my home, lock my door tight, and stroll down to the bus stop, I may have seemed calm, collected and generally okay, I was ripping myself apart in shear terror, trying to reason with myself to ditch, run away and don’t face your fear, but with the help of my friend, i muscled through it and took my first steps on campus. Studying every detail, the brick wall with the name plastered on, the steel polls, keeping up a tent like structure, the vast lakes of dried concrete leading from one side of the school to the other… t was breathtaking, both beautiful and nerve racking.
I decided to make my way into the school along with all the other freshmen, shuffling in the same direction, like sheep being led by a shepherd. I was fortunate enough to find one of my closest friends, and her and I went to see if we could find a map of this insane complex of buildings. After what felt like an eternity, the bell rang with an erie clang to it. I walked to my first period, thinking out loud that “This is going to go horribly, I’m going to trip and fall, everyone going to laugh at me, the teacher is going to yell at me to stop being a disturbance”.
I negotiated my way through the waves of students to Art & Drawing 1 in C Building, found an empty seat and let my mind fester and wait for things to spiral out of control… nothing. The class went without a hitch, we made a seating chart, we started with a drawing, seeing what we can do now, and Mister Martin said we would do another, comparing the two to see how we’ve improved then he passed out a syllabus… and we played pictionary for the rest of the period. Later on, I was off to second period, relatively disappointed that things went well. However, things did go just a wee bit worse this time, but it mostly went well.
I still had the staple of the classes will be a catastrophic failure and it would result in me running home, with a tear stained face. What went wrong this time is, we have something called a Career Advisory class that, on my schedule, was posted on 9th period, but it’s before 2nd period, so I was in my 2nd period class during advisory, and i didn’t figure that out till the end of the period, and I had the convenience of staying put in class and learning about health… / will never know what went on during that advisory period, and I spent many a sleepless nights, pondering of what could have been…
Anywhosies, I’m going to go ahead and say, with every period, I was more and more disappointed with how they went because the sick part of my wants to have the periods end in a crashing failure. And, thinking I had to deal with 9 1 and half hour periods in one day, I tried to go to my AVID class, but I was told otherwise and that the day was over. Even more confused than when I started, I didn’t have the patience to wait for my bus, so I just walked home, and layed on my bed, with a splitting headache and more questions than answers.
The next day comes around and I don’t have an advisory, so I’m still confused there, and I surf the sheep wave, and arrive at my avid class, eager and ready to learn, since yesterday went so well, who’s to say this will be any worse. After Avid, I troted onto Geometry for the first time, and my first impressions of Mister Zolotoff is, he’s got a sense of humor, but he thinks school is more of a priority, instead of just being funny, something I can respect. Then we arrive at the front of the school, in A building, for my favorite class, Deutsch Eins (German 1), and once again, it went without a hitch.
Verything went well, I learned how to ask from people’s names and tell them my name, and that was really fun. Then, the final period, Avid Language arts, and who woulda thunked that it was right across the hall for German. This is probably the class I may have the most work from, aside from Geo. The rest of the week went well, and it’s been the same so far. And things are looking brighter than I could’ve ever imagined or hoped for and honestly, I wouldn’t change a thing if I could. Sure, I may grow to hate my teachers at one point or another, but honestly, I’m truly happy where I am now.