While attending Notre Dame Academy was not on my ‘seven-year-old wish list,’ it certainly became my ‘fourth’ monumental wish.
Not having an older brother or sister, I felt that I was always going it alone, which meant a lot of self-imposed trauma in my school-age years. It was one month before the beginning of the fall semester and I was heading for Belleville Township High School, which was just a few blocks from my house. With Dad’s joking all the time, when he said that I could “go to whatever that school is, if I still wanted to” (he knew the name), I was stunned! Finances, not religion, were the problem, but he and Mom worked it out with four years of sacrifices ahead for them. It was a scramble to register, order a uniform and gym suit, and get books, but who cared!!! I was going to Notre Dame!
I was a good student – did well in school, but didn’t set the world on fire. In looking back and remembering highlights of those years, I realize that the social and extra-curricular activities were just as memorable, if not more so than the academic accomplishments. With the exception of freshman English, all my teachers were nuns.
Freshman Year
My freshman year was one of ‘entering’ and I was overwhelmed, but happy. I made new friends with
…show more content…
A blue ‘onesie.’ That’s when you were glad to be in an all-girls school; however, we had the new version that had an attached pleated skirt which hid those awful bloomers; however, too much clothes. On the annual field day, it was quite a sight when all 300 girls wore their gym suits - a sea of baggy blue! Great fun! My group of friends had decided to have a picnic lunch and I volunteered to bring potato salad, that my mother was to prepare, of course. It was the hit of the picnic and the following year it was a given that Mom was making potato salad again. She didn’t mind at
“School can be a tremendously disorienting place… You’ll also be thrown in with all kind of kids from all kind of backgrounds, and that can be unsettling… You’ll see a handful of students far excel you in courses that sound exotic and that are only in the curriculum of the elite: French, physics, trigonometry. And all this is happening while you’re trying to shape an identity; your body is changing, and your emotions are running wild.” (Rose 28)
...history, and the great tradition that everyone talks about. I went to Elders library and looked for books about Notre Dame, there I stumbled upon a book called “A Hundred Years”. The book was about the first hundred years of the Universities existence, and all of the Deans. I read through a couple pages and i was very intrigued. It was a book comprised of how the tradition began, and letters from every dean talking about the University and changes that needed to be made.
This story is a classic example of the social sensibilities and personal affections of the late-Victorian era. The member of the Class of 1894 formed a unique community—a commonwealth of learners—that remained intact throughout their individual lives beyond Eureka College. Besides the group effort that was taken to name the "class child" in 1894, these students also made a pledge ...
At the beginning of my freshman year, I was ready for whatever was going to be thrown at me. I was excited for the new school and the new opportunities. I had barely made the golf team but for some reason that did not faze me. I had friends from my prior years of schools and I was happy. The classes were easier than I thought they were going to be which was my biggest worry going in. Little did I know that my friendships were the biggest issue.
high school feeling utterly nervous; now as a senior, I have been accepted into college! Oh my.
As any normal teen, I was nervous for the first day, mainly being that my best friend had transferred to another school. I thought I wouldn’t be able to make any friends, and such did happen. I was never fully able to “fit in.” My hair was never long enough; my body was never skinny enough I was like the jigsaw puzzle that never fit. But not only did I have to fit in with my peers, I had to also fit in at home to what I considered to be the perfect family. My dad and mom were successful business tycoons, my two sisters were very popular and always maintained a perfect g.p.a. and then there was me, struggling to even get a B+ in class ...
Nathan, Rebekah. My freshman year: what a professor learned by becoming a student. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. Print.
My first two weeks on campus were great. When I first walked on to the campus, it felt very foreign like I was in another country. I didn’t feel connected yet and still felt like a visitor. Most of the time I didn’t know exactly where I was going and of course, I didn’t want to look like a freshman. Eventually, I did find where I was going, after going to Cajun connection.
Simple extracurricular activities such as cross-country and track as a whole remained mysteries to me since my school did not offer such activities. Nevertheless, I remained content in the Evangel Heights culture, for it is a pleasant culture. I still had friends, learned basic algebra, and even learned all sixty-six books of the Bible. What more could I ask for?
One year, I tagged along with my parents when they drove my brother and sister to Worldview Academy. Unfortunately, I forgot about the incident. That all changed, though, when I found myself enrolled at the same academy my siblings had previously attended. Since then, I have returned three times and this year served as my third and final “term”. After my enrollment, I concluded that I had discovered an anomaly, for I had never found myself more comfortable in a crowd of perfect strangers, nor so intrigued with academic subjects or experienced such an exhilarating time evangelizing as I had at the academy.
Being Marefat's first graduating class to complete all four years, one can say we've acquired a higher level of school wisdom than any previous class. We've formed traditions, we've set records, and we've made a lot of friends along the way. I remember our freshman year when we could use the excuse of being a new school for every shortcoming we encountered. I remember our sophomore year, the last time I cleaned my bedroom, when Marefat had its first senior class, and the school seemed to shrink for some reason. Last year we were the juniors, and we conquered the SAT tests: And made it through those busy days where you hadn't quite found room in your schedule to pencil in a bathroom break, dinner or sleep. Well, this year we were the kings and queens, there was Star Wars, Starbucks, and a certain football team lost its winning streak to the mighty Knights. Looking back we can see our accomplishments and the marks we made. Now, we must take all that we have learned in our years at Marefat and apply it to our future. Just as we have set traditions here, we must enter the world ready to tackle new problems and work out new solutions. We are the ones who can break all of those records that have been set, and have our names etched in history. It's our turn -- the world is ours and we just have to decide what we want to do with it.
Yet again, I was starting another school where I didn’t know anyone.I had to do it all over again, with the same thoughts going through my head, wondering what it was going to be like, always wondering if I was going to fit and make friends easily knowing how big it was. I decided that these next two years at this school were going to be focused on college and my school work, I wasn’t going to be in any clubs or sports. I thought to myself that joining a sport at a small school was very different and I didn’t want to know what it was like at a big school. I managed starting this school just like I managed starting high school. Good thing I am very outgoing so I enjoy meeting new people! I remember my first day of school there like it was yesterday. Walking in and seeing thousands of faces that I have never seen before. It was huge, 1500 in each grade. It was so big that they had two different campuses; one for the freshman and sophomores and another for the juniors and seniors. It was really hard making friends but I was lucky enough to be able to go to the Lake County Tech Campus associated with the College of Lake County and I made a lot of friends there in my nursing class. It was a very racial school, there wasn’t a majority of one race whereas Central was majority whites. I enjoyed all of my teachers that I ever had at Warren and I felt that I really learned a lot compared to feeling like I was ever
Let’s flash back in time to before our college days. Back to then we had lunch trays filled with rubbery chicken nuggets, stale pizza, and bags of chocolate milk. A backpack stacked with Lisa Frank note books, flexi rulers, and color changing pencils. The times where we thought we wouldn’t make it out alive, but we did. Through all the trials and tribulations school helped build who I am today and shaped my future. From basic functions all the way to life-long lessons that helped shape my character.
As freshman, we came home from school with the mentality that we were no longer children, but rather had entered into a new stage of life. Everything seemed different and new; we weren’t the big kids on campus anymore. We no longer were the persons being looked up to, but rather were the persons looking up to an entire school of older students. We remember joining our firsts clubs, going to dances, and having Orientation days.
Having spent twelve years of my school life in just one small red brick building, the years tend to fade into each other. But the year I remember most clearly and significantly is my senior year of high school, where I finally began to appreciate what this institution offered to any student who stopped to look. Before, school had been a chore, many times I simply did not feel motivated toward a subject enough to do the homework well, and seeing the same familiar faces around ever since I was 5 years old grew very tiring soon enough. But I began to see things from a different angle once I became a senior.