As a senior looking back on my high school career, I’ve come to realize that being at home freshman year was probably the best thing that happened to me because it gave me the chance that I needed to be able to figure out how to really shape myself for high school.
Prior to high school, my family moved around a lot which meant I never had the chance to fully belong before I had to move again. This caused my personality to be a bit closed off, and even trying to start a conversation with someone didn’t feel worth it.
So at the beginning of my freshmen year, I was happy because I was able to do school from the comfort of my own home and wouldn’t have to worry about socializing. I also was very focused on my education and getting good grades and knew that being at home would help me to be more focused.
But After the first few weeks of distant learning it started hitting me that I wasn’t going to experience my first year of high school with other people which was kind of sad, and I realized I needed to change, especially when I couldn’t really figure out what to do with my downtime.
Since I didn’t have any friends to talk to or any activities that I really enjoyed doing I was kind of just stuck. At that moment I set a goal for myself to try and get out of my comfort zone and talk to people first because waiting for people to come talk to me first hadn’t really gotten me anywhere. I realized I was looking to form relationships with people outside of class; people I could really hang out with and relate to, and build strong friendships with.
With this new mindset, things were different going into my sophomore year in high school, which was my first year in high school in person. When a teacher would give the students time to discuss something with their groups I would force myself to participate and give my point of view on the subject. This allowed not only my voice to be heard but I was also giving people the chance to get to know how I think instead of just being mysterious all the time.
Another thing that helped me make friends was the support of teachers. During that sophomore year my English teacher set all the students in table groups and forced us to introduce ourselves to each other to try to get to know one another. I remember him saying “you’ll thank me later”.
Amazingly, he was right! I met a friend at the table who I found pretty interesting because we had mutual friends but never really bothered to talk to each other. She and I had a lot of commonalities, with the nicest thing being that we were both Arab, which made us connect even more due to speaking the same language and sharing the same traditions. Ever since then we’ve stayed close friends for the past 3 years and have the strongest bond.
Now that I am a senior I feel like not having experienced my first year of high school gave me more time to prepare myself for how I wanted high school to look like, and how I wanted to change how I approached others.. It helped show me that I shouldn’t take anything for granted and actually take advantage of making as many memories as I can.
