Change

            Senior year. Senior-itis. Senior privilege. Senior portrait. Senior prank. Senior, Senior, Senior. This is it. Last chance to prove myself. Socially and academically before the rest of my life. Sure, I still have college, but I have got to prove myself in high school first.
            Before high school, I was a great student. I did my work because I wanted to earn the grade. I went to class because cutting class was unheard of. I ran in PE because I didn’t want to be made fun of for being lazy.
            Now, being a senior, I look back at my freshman, sophomore, and junior years and compare it to my junior high. I have changed so immensely, that I wanted to figure out why this change happened. I looked at my environment for the answer as to why I have become such a different person.
            Learning things in high school is not the same as learning in middle school. In middle school, I was babied. Taken care of. Everything was given to me, and we got to go on field trips. I got to high school, and boy, what a change. Everything was so different. Fast pace, a lot more homework, many different classes, and a language? It was just too much. I was forced to a halt and what used to be a smooth ride on the Richter scale, was now a class four raging river, and I didn’t know how to swim. This change caused me to reevaluate my working skills- only, I didn’t reevaluate.
             I believe you have to make mistakes before you can truly understand what you have to do. And that is what happened to me. I have definitely struggled throughout high school. English especially was difficult for me. Writing poems, reading about Transcendentalism- some things were just difficult for me to do(not to mention Chemistry!). Unfortunately, I got into the rhythm of not doing the work when I didn’t like the assignment, or even the subject of the class all together.
            It took me three years to find the switch to my light bulb and understand that without the work, the end result would not be a grade anyone would be proud of, and I wouldn’t get to the places I knew I could if I just did what I was supposed to- even if the subject was hard.
            Socially my life changed too. There were two high schools to choose from, and I remember I was absent the day we got to decide. I got stuck with Mountain View High School, but even if I had a choice, I wouldn’t know what to pick. So I was happy that the choice was made for me. The only downside was that nearly all my friends, except for maybe two, were going to Los Altos. I have grown up here all my life, but in fourth grade, I went to a different elementary school across town, because the previous one had too many kids. I had experienced this change of friends and teachers already. I knew what was ahead of me when I was going to a high school with tons of people I didn’t know. But it still wasn’t the same change.
            In fourth grade, there weren’t many “clicks”. We all just hung out and wrote in spelling books. High school students are in no way the same. There are more kinds of people and clicks than I can count on my fingers and toes. And there definitely aren’t spelling books anymore. But what was the same, was the way I dealt with this situation. I am a huge people person. It is so easy for me to talk to people and just make conversation. Within three months, I had a huge group of “lunch-time friends” and plenty of friends in my classes. I had succeeded again in this challenge. Why it was way easier to make that social change and not the academic change, I don’t know, but I do know I’ve changed yet again.
           This is my last year, and I’m making the best of it. There is no more giving up for me, and now that I’m getting ready for college, I do know what to expect. Probably bigger classes, more interesting subjects, and even more work. Soon, all that will be on my mind will be College, College, College. College books, College professors, College tuition…