My current school has been an incredible atmosphere for me. It changed my life during a time when I needed a positive environment. At my old school, I was getting bullied and not receiving a strong education. That’s when my school came into my life. This very special and unique learning atmosphere changed my life; however, I had a rough first day.

On top of the fact that this was a completely new environment, it was also my first day of middle school. I knew a few people from a party that one of my classmates had thrown, but still felt very left-out. When first driving into the school, I got really nervous, especially since I did not know who to talk to. After walking into the school, my sister’s third grade teacher guided my family to the middle school section. My dad was on crutches that day because he had really strained his back. This drew lots of attention to my family because he had a difficult time getting around. Eventually, I walked out to the lower school playground, said bye to my dad, and was introduced to all of the 6th grade boys sitting amongst the school. It seemed too overwhelming standing in a crowd of strangers and looking at a bunch of teachers, most of whom I hadn’t even talked to yet. After the assembly, we tried to find our teachers.

It took me a stressful 15 minutes to find the teacher I was supposed to start out the day with, but eventually, I followed one of the 6th grade advisors, along with a few other lost students, into the school.

My first middle school class was advisory. I knew it had something to do with community building; which was something that I did not enjoy. I had nobody to talk to and didn’t like these kinds of activities anyways, making the day worse and causing me to question myself: “Is this school the right fit for me?”

The next class was Spanish. Over the summer, Bethany and I had received Spanish tutoring twice a week, she was a new student and also one of my classmates. I was incredibly nervous for this class, especially since I had not taken Spanish with more than two people my entire life. The only experience I had with fluent spanish speakers was soccer with some latinos at my old school. I was excited to learn spanish; however, I had no idea how to do the activities that we were working on.  At this point in the day I was completely overwhelmed and could not concentrate on anything but the fact that attending this school was a huge mistake.

Humanities class, which took place in the afternoon, was another overwhelming experience for me. I knew it involved english writing and history, which were all subjects I had not been very good at. The humanities teacher gave us an assignment which involved looking up words in a dictionary and writing down their definitions with their synonyms/antonyms. I didn’t really know how to look up definitions in a dictionary, nor had I been taught how to do this before. I was completely lost for about the eighth time in one day. On top of that, it seemed like I was the only person that did not understand what we were doing. I was glancing at the clock about every 5 minutes, just hoping the day would end.

Even though my first day at my new school one of the most difficult days in my life, this school has made me a stronger person and has definitely been worth all of the hard work in the long run. I have improved as a person, have been given a tremendous education and have been exposed to a positive learning atmosphere for 4 years. I am incredibly grateful that I have had the opportunity to attend this school and hope that my intellectual ability will continue to grow in the years to come.