I’ve heard it said that high school is the best years of your life. There’s so much going on. new classes with new teachers, new pals, and some school events all in one!  It’s a time where people either begin to branch out, or branch in. High school is the milestone that some people love, and others dread.  Most of the time, high school life comes with a lot of excitement and fun,  but sometimes it does not. Sometimes it can be rough, and hard to see the end of, which can be figured out if you make some change.   When this happens it’s important to see that high school also comes with a lot of options and opportunities for people that may not realize these or asking the question “what would happen if I...”. When students try something new, they can not only learn from the experience but have a happier memory of it .

My first day high school was a very positive one. I got a ride from my older brother, met up with friends, met some people, and got my schedule. Since it was the first day of school everyone still had that “summer pizazz” aka tans and short haircuts. Plenty of people had some new 2014 summer clothes and it was pretty funny to see so many people accidentally wearing the same hoodies and tee-shirts. But my friends and I always had a thing about the color the blue, so naturally there was a group that pretty much was full blown blue on the first day of school. My schedule was slightly different compared to others, I started off my day by getting on a school bus, to a separate school. It was a great site, called CASEE which held up half of my day with english, biology, and some from of natural science. But it did have its drawbacks, going to a different campus meant that I couldn’t talk to most of my friends. Teachers were just as confused as we were, every class had the solid 15 minutes of “is that how I say your name right?” which is always funny. Most of them were somewhat nice, except the ones who forgot coffee on the first day. The teachers liked to be somewhat organized on the first day, so they had mostly plaid and flannels.

So far so good, what could go wrong? It was about two months into the school year and everyone just seemed to be acting themselves, nice and calm. But it was the time of people's life where they just think different and some people were taking it to a whole new level. It was really weird seeing my middle school buds starting cursing and acting really weird, but they were my friends so I never tried to tell them to stop. They were just probably stressed and needed to relax and let off some steam, so I just decided to not to bring it up. Time passed and people kinda got out of hand, not my friends but in certain parts of the school there was some major fights, and people doing drugs I didn’t even know were “available” in Battle Ground, of course people wouldn’t do them at school just the occasional rumors came up a lot.
I was starting to think maybe it wasn’t the people, but my mindset. All the fights might have been self defense, everyone cussing could just be temporary, and rumors are just rumors. I was mainly focusing on certain things, like homework and stuff, and after awhile, I realized that sometimes I might believe in a rumor, maybe even encourage it to spread, and it could honestly be fake for all I know. Something also started to pop-up, I was starting to lose trust in a lot of friends. With high school happening people can get stressed, and so did my friends, they were being mean to people which caused me to dislike them. The occasional “that’s dumb” or “wow you’re stupid” to random people were pretty rude and uncalled for. But it could've been just a misunderstanding, and a simple slip or mistake.

I wanted to change, not like 100 percent super change, but just not judge people or hold grudges, it doesn’t do anyone any good. It all revolved around one thing, everything bad was happening at school, bullies, really mad adults, stressed students, it was possible it was all coming from the environment. So why not switch schools? But there was one problem, I still had good friends and good memories, It’s not like the entire school was the bane of my existence, just some parts were upsetting. Then something bad happened to me, the whole year I was in a relationship, just trying it out and enjoying every second of it. After awhile we didn’t see eye to eye and the relationship ended, pretty big bummer. It happened on a Friday, and when I came back on Monday, there were rumors about me and why we broke up, most of it not being true.
My friends believed I was a bad person for breaking up with her and starting treating me differently and distancing themselves from me.  It was time to make a change, I really didn’t like my school and I wanted to swap out. I talked to my parents and they agreed that it couldn’t hurt to try. “Why not just give it a shot?”
A few months later I came to school, and I was introduced to the ASB class right off the bat, besides the 5 seconds of awkward stares when I walked in, it was almost an instant greeting party. Everyone was already happy and focused on what’s important. It's like the whole school just has a little secret trust factor, where older are nice to younger, and younger are nice to older. I couldn’t be more happy with my choice to change, I have  new friends, and new opportunities.