A fresh start for school

The start of a new school year is like the beginning of something new, whether we are starting at a new high school or we are back in the same environment as the school year prior. Beginning a new school year opens up new doors and many more opportunities that we maybe never realized would be open to us.

The beginning of a new school year may bring upon us a variety of positivity or may unfortunately cause tensions of negativity. For many of us, we hope to make drastic improvements, whether it be academically, mentally and even socially. As years go by, school is changing and so are the students; the style of music we feel pressured to listen to, the clothes we feel we have to wear and the people we should hang around with.

Much of my experiences in the beginning of a school year before high school have been negative encounters. Until I began at Garfield High School, I was highly impacted by school negatively, from bullying to depression. Throughout many of my elementary and middle school years I was always bullied for standing out. I stood out because I was smarter than most students and it made me look like an outcast, so I started failing my classes and not caring for school. Ultimately, it continued to being bullied for being overweight.

It eventually got to a point where I didn’t even want to go to school at all. I had given up, I failed most of my classes in all four middle schools that I attended in the time span of only two years and barely culminated at Stevenson Middle School.

Succeeding Stevenson, I came to Garfield High School. With the negative mindset of going through the same experience, I begged my grandmother to place me in the online homeschool program, and of course she denied every time. The beginning of my first day of high school was one of the scariest experiences I could’ve possibly went through.

Everything in this school felt different, the vibes, the environment, the students and even the teachers. I finally felt accepted by my peers, I felt safe and most importantly it was the beginning of a new chapter in my life.