As of lately high school has been stressful. Six different teachers all with their own individual expectations and demands, asking for a finished worksheet, conjugations, and a well-written  essay all due on the same day. There are days when I freak out over the thought of forgetting my calculator or accidentally leaving my work on my desk at home, and it’s annoying. Sometimes it feels like the stress will never leave me. I’ll drag it around like my shadow, with me all my life. I wish I was a little kid again, that all my worries would just fly away for good. It was in Kindergarten that I made some of my best memories. 

  It was a foggy, Monday morning in San Francisco as I walked the ten and a half blocks with my parents to my new school. I was five years old, and it was my first day of Kindergarten. I skipped across the black and white paved road to come across a peach - colored building with a few trees in front of it, which bordered the sidewalk along the boulevard. I anxiously stood on the steps with my plaid jumper and floral-print lunch box as I was forced to smile for photo after photo. My parents must’ve used an actual camera, which is strange in hindsight. I did as I was told, wearing the smile but just thinking Can I go now? I wanted so desperately to keep walking, to go through the doors and see what was inside, whatever “school” actually meant. After taking the pictures, my family and I walked up the steps and through the double doors. A huge hallway met my eyes, and we were greeted by other people. I was walked down the long corridor to the classroom, which had an adorable banner saying “Welcome Students”, painted with butterflies and flowers. The small tables, which I learned were called desks, were arranged into cute little groups. Mine was at the front of the classroom near the board. Inside the desk was a coloring book and some crayons. Only five? I thought, as I was directed to take them out of their small red box and turn to one of the first pages of the book. As parents said their last goodbyes, I saw my mom waving to me from the doorway.
I vividly remember being confused when the teacher told us to color everything that started with the letter “A” blue. Why can’t we just color it any color we want? As kindergarten progressed, we learned through crafting, basically. We made little books about animals and wrote out vowels and our names in beads. We cut out pages to small comics about letters as the teachers helped us staple them. In Kindergarten, I learned how to read, first by listening to others and by looking at the pictures, then later by reading them for myself, stumbling over the vowels and consonants.  Before that I’d only ever read a page or two, which had about five words, which probably said something like “I like cats.” Later, when I was at last able to string words and phrases together, I found an appreciation for reading and writing.

Throughout the first half of the year, I didn’t really have any friends. I would spend recess and lunch playing with everyone, kind of moving around the early-forming cliques. However, it was in Kindergarten where I played “family”, where I was the younger sister. I was a director, an actress, and I even participated in “under-the-sea” themed parties, which included a multitude of bubbles and all of us dancing to upbeat music, the clear orbs floating away through the air along with all my worries. In the corner of the classroom, there was an area dedicated just to “playing pretend”. I chose it over building blocks and using the old apple computers every single time. A homemade painted-cardboard house took up most of the corner, the rest filled with shelves of props and “food”. In the center was a small wooden table, the center of the dramatic play area. It was here that I called home, where I made pretend meals for the other kids and watched over them as I pretended to be their mother. It was where I spent the majority of my year. I loved that place. I loved it.

Throughout grades 3-7, my love for drama dwindled as I was reunited with the Kindergarten teacher. A few years older and looking more tired than the last time I’d seen her, my teacher stood before us as she barked directions for the play. I memorized lines and auditioned them in front of people. Along with that came a general lack of deodorant from the guys in the class as well as a new-found love for expanded vocabularies. It was in the sixth grade that the science group of our grade met to study. There were about five of us, and we decided to call our clan the Sixth Grade Science Group, how original. We were the smarties of the class, identified by good test scores and an overall passion for learning. We met in the printer room and sometimes the piano room; each one overlooked the vast slab of concrete we called  “The Yard”.  We’d pore over the texts of the science books, making fun of Russian scientists’ names and display our memorization skills by playing a form of Jeopardy. Most of our conversations went something like this:

“Guys look, his name is Dmitri Mend…”
“Dmitri Mendeleev? Yeah, he’s got a pretty weird name.”
“I know, right? I mean, it sounds kinda like--”
“OKAY EVERYONE, who wants to play Jeopardy?” This was usually what my friend, Cate would go about asking during our study sessions.
“No, let’s just get this done, then Jeopardy. Hey, do you think we’ll have to study the whole Periodic Table?” Michael had asked.

Sure, Michael, because our minds have the capacity to easily remember 118 elements, my sarcastic twelve-year-old self thought. “No, I really don’t think so,” I’d finally tell him. And so our studying would proceed, back to researching what types of elements were liquids, solids, and gases.

All this was for our Science Challenge, the climax of our scientific careers as we knew it. At the end of the year, all of us took part in it, a battle of wit and knowledge against the different grades in middle school. Five students took their places on the front row of the bleachers, the rest behind them. These students, our science group, was the only hope. We were the dream team, leading our class to victory: seven extra bonus points. I was the alternate participant; one year I even got us the award. In hindsight it sounds pretty lame, but hey, it was fun for us. Along with the science challenges came “outside articles” and other assignments from my science teacher that tested my sanity.

In eighth grade, merit was earned by having good grades. In our community of learning, there was an odd aristocracy of intelligent people, who’d show off their talent by waving perfect-score papers in the air as everyone asked each other how they did. Students were peer-pressured into getting good grades, and I was one of them. But it wasn’t really learning that my peers wanted. They wanted to achieve. To get praised for what they had done, and that’s great in moderation. It wasn’t helpful, however, when my teacher called the same three people’s names a few times a week to congratulate them on a well-written paper. To this day I know the writing styles and tools used in these particular people’s writing,  just because I have heard somebody talk about it so many times.  Throughout the year, I would watch, not really listening as my instructor droned on. As for homework, I put most of it off till the last possible minute, stressing so much I wanted to cry. But it was all worth it when I got it back with the 10 mark on it, right? I guess not. I don’t think anything compared to the work of my classmates in that last year. I was almost in disbelief as I walked down the aisle in my graduation gown, surprised that I’d made it. I made it.

Since last year, maybe even since the second semester of this year, things have somewhat improved. Yes, there’s still a weight of stress which I carry around everytime I have to get something done or take a test, but it has eased away. Currently, it’s a dull ache compared to last year. Nonetheless, I wish I was a little kid. No cares or worries in the world. Young children are oblivious to the world around them for the most part, and that’s something I could really use at the moment. Even as I began to write my narrative, the happiest moments which surfaced from the void in my mind were ones of my time spent in Kindergarten. Throughout my educational career so far, the early years were the best, and I hope that someday it’ll go back to being that way.