The New School | Teen Ink

The New School

November 2, 2017
By LegitBimbo BRONZE, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
LegitBimbo BRONZE, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

It was my first day in a school in the United States. I was nervous, but also excited for the possibilities that awaited me. After ten years in Germany, I was not used to moving, but if this school was anything like the schools in Germany, I should be able to slip right in. It started out well, but everything that goes up must come down.


On my first day of school, my classmates flocked to me like I was a horrific road collision, too interesting to look away from, but too ugly for words.  During lunch I was already invited to sit with a group of people, and numerous people had already befriended me. At the end of the day, I was ecstatic that things were going so well. When my parents came home, I told them all about my day, and how happy I was, and how this was going to be an easy transition. Until I was in school for a few weeks...


After a while, people started to lose interest in me until they shut the friendship door so fast that it smacked me on the way out. I still had a few friends, but I was a shy, awkward person who did not have a lot of self-esteem, so I had not gotten to know anyone very well yet. I spent every day alone at lunch, just like a lonely cactus, yearning for attention but always too unlovable. This caused me to fall into a slump. A sad, lonely slump. I missed my friends, and I clearly was not fit to be anybody’s best friend (since everyone knew everybody else for such a long time), and it caused me to be even more distant and apathetic than usual. I wanted to be moved to a private school, where I would not have to be a textbook case of the middle school loser. I was envious of everyone for being so lucky, and not having to lose friends every few years like I did. I went from a king to a serf. A computer to a brick. A well-respected, wonderful person to Jared Fogle. Before I knew everyone, but now I knew nobody. However, like I expected, my parents did not answer my pleas to let me go elsewhere. So I was left at that terrible school and I had to sit through every terrible class for six hours a day, five days a week, four weeks a month, and quite a few months every year. On the bright side, over the course of the school year, I got to know some of my friends better. So not only was my suffering eased, but I also met a girl named Samantha who I befriended, and I was invited to sit with her and her friend during lunch. They were both very nice and I now had buddies to sit with at lunch. Over time however, her friend had to switch lunch periods, so it was just Samantha and I. We still talked, but not as much during lunch since it seemed her friend seemed to have the most exciting stuff to talk about. It was nice that I had someone to sit with though, even if most of our conversations went something like this:

“How was your day? Did anything exciting happen?” I asked.
“My day was good. And no, not really,” Samantha said in response.
“Oh,” I said.
“Yeah,” she replied.


It was pretty boring since we had nothing to talk about most of the time, but it was still nice having someone to sit with. After weeks of boring lunch along with a plethora of good and bad days however, the third quarter started, and things would only improve for me from then on.


It all started on the very first day on the third quarter. I was making my way to my elective class (gym) and I was ready to meet new people...until I realized they were all guys and the type of people I would never get along with very well. “Well gee,” I thought with disappointment, “If a class were to be nominated for most sexist, this might be the winner.” After an exhilarating class period filled with sitting in the corner, I decided to go to the office to get my schedule changed. I decided to get my first hour and third hour switched and go into Communication Arts…


At first I saw that I knew nobody very well in this class either, but at least it was a class that was more diverse and the people here did not all look like egotistical jerks. After the teacher told me what to do, I plopped down in a seat, and class began. At first, I was painfully shy. It felt like it physically hurt when people talked to me because for some reason, this class made me even more nervous than usual. Thankfully however, as time progressed, I learned that I shared a common interest with a large group in the class. This allowed me to slip into their clique with a little effort and befriend them, which in turn gave me another group to sit with at lunch. As time went on, although we had only known each other for a few months, I managed to become very good friends with the people in that class (and some others who already knew someone in the class), and I still consider them some of my best friends in Michigan. This was rather surprising to me as I thought I would hate some of my biggest friends (and so did some of them as well), and I could not believe I would find such good friends near the end of the year.


This experience taught me a very important lesson in life. That lesson was to never give up no matter what. Even when you feel that you are at the bottom, you should never give up hope that things could get better. You should always try to think of what good things could happen, instead of what bad things have already happened, because it does not matter where you began, but where you end up.



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