Being the new kid in school is never easy. Being the new kid, almost halfway through the year, in a sea of three thousand faces, was more than just challenging. Trying to navigate a new school for two days, only to go on Thanksgiving break for a week and a half, made me the new kid twice. I counted down the days until summer when I could come back to Maine and spend three months with my friends before I was dragged back. But by the end of it, I knew there was no way I could leave home again. I was three months into my sophomore year at Kennebunk High School when my parents broke the news. “California!” my dad exclaimed. “Isn’t this exciting?!” my mom asked. At first, I was excited. Kennebunk, where I had lived my entire life was quiet, …show more content…
often boring and it seemed like everyone’s general attitude was, “I can’t wait to get out of this town.” But California was new, exciting, you wouldn’t run out of things to do. Whenever I had been on vacation there, I always had fun. Living there would be like vacation everyday! A fresh start, with different people, who haven’t known me since I was born. I’m leaving the town where I’ve been stuck my entire life! It hit me. I’m leaving the town where I’ve been my entire life. I’ve known these people since I was born. The friendships and bonds I had, would be irreplaceable. I would have to leave all the people that had I had been around since kindergarten. I didn’t necessarily have strong bonds with all of them, but I felt comfortable around them. And school! I suddenly wouldn’t be in schools where the teachers had known my sister so I could gauge what to expect from their classes. Small things I had never noticed before and taken for granted would suddenly cease to be a part of my day to day life. I arrived in Danville November 15th. Immediately I noticed major differences between Kennebunk and Danville. I started school on the 17th, which was a Thursday. The girl who was assigned to show me around the seven building campus was a sophomore, like me, but she had grown up in the area. As we went on a walk through of my schedule, I asked her questions about anything I could think of, how she liked living there, what classes she was taking, what she knew about my teachers. But her answers were short, generic, and she didn’t ask any questions in return. Here and there other girls would call out to her in the halls, like how I used to with my friends at home. After showing me how to do my full schedule, she dropped me off at my first class with an announcement to the teacher that I was the new girl from Massachusetts and left. “What part of Massachusetts are you from?” the teacher asked, trying to be nice. “Uh, I’m actually from Maine, Kennebunk, Maine.” I replied meekly, suddenly aware of the thirty sets of eyes focused on me. After my first class Katie, my guide, was supposed to meet me.
She never showed up. The second day I flew solo again, and then the school went on Thanksgiving break. After a week on break, I went back to school. People I had talked to my first few days had forgotten who I was, and I had to reintroduce myself. Being the new kid once was difficult, but having the same introductory conversations with people twice was torture. I kept telling myself it would get better the more I was there, the more time I spent around people, I’d be able to make friends. But it didn’t. As hard as I tried, as many new people I talked to, none of the conversations stuck. They all carried on with their lives, while I found myself feeling increasingly lonely even though I was around three thousand …show more content…
people. After the most miserable year of my entire life, I got to go home for the summer.
I took my finals early so I could make it back in time for Kennebunk’s graduation ceremony. We had kept our house in Maine, and even though it was half empty, it didn’t feel like anything changed. Kennebunk got out for summer break a week after I had been home, and suddenly everything went back to the normal. I was working at the same place I did before I left, I was living at home, and I was once again with all the people I grew up with. I realized how much I had missed in my friends lives though. Not just big events like birthdays, but the smalls jokes that are created in the day to day. As the end of summer drew closer, and the date that I had to fly back loomed in the near future, I realized I couldn’t go back. There was no way I could face that again. The depression I had worked so hard to come out of, slowly started to set back in, and my parents picked up on it. After much deliberation, I decided to stay at my aunt’s for the school year, and I watched my family go back to the West
Coast. Saying goodbye to my family was the hardest thing I had to ever do. But I realized I couldn’t be happy in California. My grades would suffer again, and junior year was too important to risk it. I knew it would be too much to be the new kid for a third time. As difficult as it was to say goodbye to my family, it would have been harder to say goodbye to people and places that were my home.
It was the fall of 2010 and little did I know that my world was about to change drastically. We had moved back to Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2008 after living in Mexico, and I was starting to enjoy my life in the dairy state. My 6th Grade classes had just started at Bullen Middle School. It was right at this time when my world seemingly got flipped upside down. My parents had a family meeting and informed my siblings and me that we were moving to a small Iowa town called Orange City. I had feelings of nervousness, excitement, and sadness all mixed together.
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 ...
Before, I could even take note, it was already October. It was time for me to pack everything in my room, and say my final goodbyes to my family members. I was going to leave everything that meant a lot to me behind. Previously, before October, we picked up my dad from the airport so that he could help us load all of our belongings to the U-Haul truck. Lily, ‘my cousin’, (we aren’t related, she is just a very close friend who I consider family) was staying with use because she want to see her father, who was also living in Denver. My mom and dad, sister, uncle, cousin, and I all stayed at the house one last night. I remember that my sister said that all her friends gathered around my mom’s car to wave goodbye to her. Her closest friends got very emotional and they started to cry. Not only did the move affect me, it also affected my sister greatly. It was like someone had given her a punch in the stomach. By the next day, we had everything in the U-Haul truck, and it was time for me to leave my precious Vegas behind. We had now started the drive to
Can I love? Can I be loved? Am I worthy of love? I am a woman who experienced the anguish of love-loss at a very tender age and these questions capture my prime concern and fear in life. At a young age, I bore the brunt of neglect and abuse from the very caregivers who were supposed to be my protectors. At the age of 16, I was put into foster care. I have experienced tumultuous and dysfunctional intimate relationships in my search for love, connectivity and identity. Now, as a mother, I am learning to give the love I never got.
Why is it that the events we remember the most are the most heartbreaking and detrimental. Your brought up as a child thinking nothing horrific could ever happen to you when in reality you are likely to come across a difficult situation A majority of kids are sheltered in a way that inhibits decision making. Gaining maturity is about being able to make judgments while considering values
Growing up for me some would say it was rather difficult and in some ways I would agree. There have been a lot of rough times that I have been through. This has and will affect my life for the rest of my life. The leading up to adoption, adoption and after adoption are the reasons my life were difficult.
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
Spring 2012: finals coming up, everyone getting ready for semi, talk of summer plans. Meanwhile I was on my couch recovering from my broken leg (my cast was up to my mid thigh). I had to take a week off of school according to my doctors so I spent a lot of time on my iPad waiting for someone to post something in “8 Green Girls”. Nothing. I was bored out of my mind. When it came time for me to return to school naturally I was excited for all my “friends” to see me again (and for me to see them of course). I arrived and went to my science teacher's room and sat in a wheelchair waiting for friends to visit and keep me company. I think I was only visited by four friends in total. They didn’t even stay to keep me company. They came. They saw. They left. That was it, nothing, it was definitely not what I expected.
A wave of relief washed over me. I was able to eat my lunch in peace. I grabbed the TV remote and turned the TV on. I switched to the news channel to see if anything had yet been settled with Miranda, but the news broadcasts only made me cringe.
I started yet another school and tried to make friends into my Sophomore year. My Freshman year of high school I had been diagnosed with Anxiety disorder, this happened about a month before that tornado. My Sophomore year of high school went pretty well, I made a few friends and some of my friends from Moore started the same school. The summer before my Junior year was a difficult one. I lost my grandfather, my dad’s step-father, a family pet that we had had since we lived in Washington, and I lost my close friend more into the school year that year. My Junior year I started on more different anxiety medications and I had one knee surgery, that was in March 2015. Also in my Junior year I met some amazing friends that I hope that I will keep for years to come. This last summer was a rather uneventful one, compared to the previous years. This last summer I started going to counseling where I was diagnosed with PTSD, Depression, and diagnosed again with
Facing the typical struggles of a new kid brought new, scary challenges, but challenges that would help me grow and discover the person I am today. Arriving as “the new kid” in the last two years of middle school suddenly generated bouts of social anxiety and depression, scary feelings I had never faced before then. In the beginning, I struggled to open up and for a long time I just went through the motions to get through the day and forgot to actually live. Eventually, I pushed myself to ignore everything that was telling me to stay in bed and tried to find what made me excited to start a new day. Naturally drawn to history and literature, I resorted to books and television as an outlet during the transition of meeting new people and making new friends. Discovering new and old stories eventually lead to the resurgence of my curiosity of the world around me and what it had to offer me and what I could potentially offer the world. My curiosity helped me to become more open-minded and left me with an insatiable need to always continue learning new and widespread
Everything seems like it’s falling out of place, it’s going too fast, and my mind is out of control. I think these thoughts as I lay on my new bed, in my new room, in this new house, in this new city, wondering how I got to this place. “My life was fine,” I say to myself, “I didn’t want to go.” Thinking back I wonder how my father felt as he came home to the house in Stockton, knowing his wife and kids left to San Diego to live a new life. Every time that thought comes to my mind, it feels as if I’m carrying a ten ton boulder around my heart; weighing me down with guilt. The thought is blocked out as I close my eyes, picturing my old room; I see the light brown walls again and the vacation pictures of the Florida and camping trip stapled to them. I can see the photo of me on the ice rink with my friends and the desk that I built with my own hands. I see my bed; it still has my checkered blue and green blanket on it! Across from the room stands my bulky gray television with its back facing the black curtain covered closet. My emotions run deep, sadness rages through my body with a wave of regret. As I open my eyes I see this new place in San Diego, one large black covered bed and a small wooden nightstand that sits next to a similar closet like in my old room. When I was told we would be moving to San Diego, I was silenced from the decision.
It was the second semester of fourth grade year. My parents had recently bought a new house in a nice quite neighborhood. I was ecstatic I always wanted to move to a new house. I was tired of my old home since I had already explored every corner, nook, and cranny. The moment I realized I would have to leave my old friends behind was one of the most devastating moments of my life. I didn’t want to switch schools and make new friends. Yet at the same time was an interesting new experience.
Have you ever been the new kid? Have you ever been a new kid to 6 different high schools? Well even if you have been the new kid at least once you know how it feels. The first day you walk into a school you have never been too. Everyone is staring at you. Inside you are freaking out, wondering if you are going to walk into the wrong class or be late. We all know there is lunch during school and this is a hard time for a new student.
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.