Personal Narrative: My Trip To Middle School

It feels like it was just yesterday, I stepped foot on campus for the first time as a freshman. I knew nothing about the challenges that were going to encounter on my journey through nor the way to my first period class on the first day. It was nothing like middle school, and I wasn’t going to miss my opportunity to prove to everyone that I’m different than I was in sixth or seventh grade. My journey started in the fourth period, Chinese 1 with Mr. Zhang. My first challenge that I knew was going to be difficult, the anxiety was crushing me. English was my first and only language, and Chinese were on another plane of difficulty, but I wasn’t going to let it stop me and I wasn’t the only one as well. It was then I find out that I really was disconnected

with the world I live in. Chinese became a priority to me and it was my goal to achieve a good grade in it as well as the rest of my class.
The China trip was annnounced, and I didn’t really want to sign up for it with the cost of the trip and the anxiety of flying to a different country for the first time was haunting me.

I was convinced by my friend to sign up for it and in return, I was picking with a few of my peers and upperclassmen. It was the day my life changed, I was going to someplace new and undiscovered by myself. Barely knowing how to say “hello” and “I don’t know,” I boarded on a flight to China. Meeting new people as well as befriending them, tasting new foods and climbing the Great Wall was a completely new experience I have had influenced my growth as a global citizen, but I realized that I was missing all of everything. The cultures, the beautiful languages of the world and the different

people.
This was a turning point for me as a person and who I wanted to be. I learned more about the world I see everyday and what we are doing to it, especially in Biology. I researched different types of pollution and made a slideshow that show how pollution us and the environment. With a short story about marine pollution with a sea turtle and a seagull as characters, we presented to elementary kids to make them aware of global issues. At this point, freshman was at the end of it’s rope and it was time to become a sophomore as well as continue my journey.
A new year, a new start as a sophomore and a time of rediscovery as I continued doing what I love music and art. In middle school, music was everything to me, I played the trombone for three years and constantly drawing stuck with me for since the beginning. I was glad that I had the classes that mean a lot to be, I even joined marching band which was a great learning experience and with that, they helped me to improve to more difficult skills as an artist. It was in Chinese 2, that I found a passion for learning new languages such as Korean and Japanese as well as Spanish. Chinese made me want to expand my horizons, and also encouraging me to take challenges head on. I knew how hard it was going to be, learning new languages with their different pronunciations and words. I want to be fluent Chinese and with that, I continued learning, character after character, pinyin and text after text in Chinese.
Chinese wasn’t the only class that had a hook on to me, World History was really interesting and connected with the writing. I didn't know how powerful words can exactly be and how I can create a connection with the readers. When I was given the prompt to write about someone living in the French revolution, everything just click and before I knew it, I had a story all written out as well as quotes and illustrations to picture everything that was happening. Handwritten notes for soldiers during the war to a lover or a citizen living on the streets, surviving barely on their feet.
The story made you feel like you were living during that time. I got my work back to score of 90 out of a 100 on my diary about a girl during the French Revolution and my teacher said, “This is Beautiful,” and wrote it in my diary. It was something that I was really proud of it and I realized that I love to write stories like in middle school, when I was writing a book about a Jewish girl and her family escaping the rays of Hitler’s power, but I never finish it. In English 10, writing different stories which many of them were my favorite, creative writing was a thing I loved as much a music and I realize that I can become an Author in the future, it was an option. That was a end for another year and I was off to the next as a Junior, it was the time to think about myself and the future.
It was Junior year, I had a lot to think about my potential career and colleges that I would like to attend.

It wasn’t the easy as I thought, over the years, my views and experiences changed me. I was still that musician, that artist, and writer that I want to be, but everything was so convoluted. I continued on with Chinese and began Chinese 3, which proved it’s difficulty and challenges as a whole. I was lacking in the passion I had before, so my grades started sipping until I dug myself into a big hole with no exit in sight. Learning languages was still what I want to do, to conquer, but everything clouded my mind and art was one of them. I continued doing art for the second and I could feel myself connecting to each artwork that I was putting out into the world. Music was not a priority as much, but I still stayed in marching band and benefited from the marches and parades I am playing in. Art was testing my skills, I was pushing and push until the idea of what I’m drawing become a reality, even if I didn’t praise my artworks. It helped me become the artist I dreamed of being, from portraits to landscapes, painting to sculpting. I was finally climbing up the pillar of art.
Distortion was the topic in Art and applying that distort to portray someone we knew like a close friend, family member or someone you can talk to, get to know more. Knowing myself, this was a difficult process for me, but I need to learn this and overcome my indecisive. At the time I couldn’t really

decide, most of the time, I find myself caught up in a web indecisiveness, so I didn’t know who to choose, there were so many candidates, but I chose my good friend Daisy, the social equivalent to me. We researched a style of distortion we like and would portray the person we are drawing.
I mesmerized with one style and drew it, but I did portray the real Daisy that everyone tends to fails to see, including me. Blue and sadden by the one’s past, yet happy and cheerful on the outside, waiting for a punch to come up and hit. I love the idea of the colors going through transition, dark and light. In the end, my artwork was distorted at all, but it wasn’t my style. I gain a lot from this project, my progress as an artist grew ten notches as well as I developed new techniques that will help me with my career. There is so much to learn in so little time and by the end of junior year, I was at an all time low, with grades and my life.
Senior year was nowhere, and anxiety was waving in like a tidal wave. I had to choose colleges or universities, yet nothing was stuck with me. I was really dumbfounded about the future, I was now an adult and I have to start with something. My grades were okay, but not really college material and my art portfolio was decent enough and passable for an art school. Of course, senior year didn’t come with its toil of research papers and alarming an election that will change everything as well as go down in history which I was a part of. Government was expected as well as English, but they both proved to me that senioritis was not an option.
The big research paper was the biggest project of senior year and you couldn’t wing your way out of this one. I, on the other hand, was without a doubt, troubled with the pressure and deadlines that I couldn’t stay on path. “Vote yes, vote no” was all I can think about and in the end, the paper was finished and done. It wasn’t my best and it proved that way at the end of the semester. My grades for the semester shown the me that was struggling in eighth grade. I knew that I have to do my best to succeed in the future, for myself and show the world.
Even though English was hard to tame, in digital art and design proved to be in my favor. I waited for this moment for a long time, doing digital art was like no other and different from a pencil and paper. We created posters to represent the social issues and injustice that is happening around us today. My topic was something that I felt was fading away and no one noticed it. People of color in power as manages as CEOs of companies, manly Black women. It wasn’t a hard piece to make, the style was still developing. I ended up with something I can look back at and learn from as well as the other ones before it.
This semester of senior year was a journey as a whole for art and for me as well. I didn’t know how high school was going to be difficult for me, but it has sculpted me as the person I am now, knowledgeable and a problem solver. Even though, my grades aren’t impressive, I gain so much from the experiences I had here at Vaughn since Pre k to senior year. Every decision and the path I took to get here was hard, but very beneficial to me and my future as an artist. My advice to you, is to enjoy every experience and hardships because you will gain something from it and learn something new and like the upperclassman before me, don’t procrastinate. My advice to the faculty at VISA is to push the students more to do things and make activities and events fun.