By: Jamie Deng, staff writer
Ever since we came back to school in person, it reminded me of a lot of negative memories of when I first came to Galileo my freshman year. I didn’t want to come back this year because I never really liked this school to begin with. My first choice was and has always been Lincoln, and even 3 years later, I’m still hoping I can end up there.
When I first found out I was placed at Galileo, I cried for hours. I didn’t have anyone since most of my friends and classmates from middle school were going to Lincoln. I felt out of place at Galileo since I had gone to middle school at Hoover, and gotten used to the sunset area.
Galileo students come mainly from Francisco or Marina Middle School, and I felt like everybody knew each other already. It didn’t help that I’m a shy person, so starting over in a new school in another neighborhood, and trying to meet new people was hard for me to get used to.
During freshman year, I also didn’t have a good experience with one of my teachers, which made everything worse. I thought they were biased towards certain people, and I didn’t feel comfortable in their class.
All I thought about was transferring out of Galileo. Towards the end of my freshman year, I signed up to transfer, but there were too many people who wanted to transfer to Lincoln as well, so I didn’t get accepted.
Then the pandemic hit, and during my Sophomore year, we had distance learning. This was like a breath of fresh air for me. I was really glad to have school on Zoom because I would much rather stay home than go back to Galileo. I liked that I got to stay at home, and was more focused, I got less distracted by people around me, and I didn’t need to go out as much.
With the pandemic, getting used to online school, and having a bunch of homework, I forgot all about signing up to transfer. The school year passed by fast, and I also thought we would stay online for junior year, so it didn’t cross my mind that we would actually come back to school.
A few months later, the school district announced that we were all going back, which surprised me because there were still many cases of Covid. But Junior year came along, and I started to get used to Galileo again and everything was good for a while. But I only got used to it because I didn’t have a choice since I had to stay at Galileo until the next round of transfer papers. Even though everything was good, my mind never changed about transferring out.
This year, I haven’t had any problems with my teachers, but there were some issues with some students, but it’s not relevant to me anymore. There was a time when I doubted whether I should transfer or not. Since I met a lot of new people, who became close to me during the school year, but we are no longer close anymore. I had a bad experience with a friend who was close to me this year, but I realized that person was someone who would come and go because of misunderstandings, and miscommunications. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, but it gave me more reasons why I should transfer.
A lot of people are telling me that I should stay next year since it’s my last year. But I want to transfer because I never felt like this school was for me, and it’s not a place I want to spend my last year of high school. Realistically I think I’ll be happier at Lincoln surrounded by people that I enjoy being with. Overall I made my decision to transfer and am waiting for a letter to see if I get accepted or not.
