I’ll be honest, writing this reflection has given me the biggest headache of my life, and I’ve had some terrible headaches in my 18 years of living. I had no idea how to condense my four years of high school. I had some of the best and worst experiences of my life in high school, so how am I supposed to simply write one article to reflect that? So I thought, maybe I’ll just start from the beginning.
Even though my first day at WJ was three years ago and so much time has passed and I’ve gone through so much since then, I remember the events of that day and how nervous I was. I started out as a sophomore who had just come from Ethiopia, so I already felt like I was an outsider of some sort. I remember not knowing how to use the Chromebooks that were given to me or any of the Google applications, just because I wasn’t used to them yet. I felt so stupid and that feeling made me so nauseous and upset. By the time I stepped into my fourth period in Journalism 1, I had already gone through two emotional breakdowns and I was flustered. I felt like there was no way the day would get better and I had only reached halfway. I remember I barged into J1 and completely broke the silence that was in the room when I entered it, which seemed to be some sort of pattern for me that whole day. I remember Mrs. Borrelli gave me a small smile, just to let me know that it was alright, and she then went on to tell us a story about how that morning her dog pooped on her jumpsuit, causing her to change her clothes at the last moment. This little unguarded moment that she had with the class made me feel much better, and her quirky and sweet personality remained a constant in my next three years.
When I was a freshman back home in Ethiopia, I was irresponsible and my grades and family life took a hit. Starting school at WJ was a way I could reinvent myself and prove to myself and my family that I was a person who could get her priorities straight and fix the mistakes of my past. I’ll be honest, even when I came to WJ I made the same mistakes, and I didn’t get to really prove anything to anyone, but maybe if I wasn’t living in regret for the past couple of years I would have proved a bit more to myself as well. I regretted how I left some things back home, and for my whole sophomore year I couldn’t really move on from that. Looking back now, the decisions I made as a 15-year-old impacted my life as an 18-year old which sucks especially since I don’t have the same mindset.
As I’m leaving WJ, I am happy to say that even though I am not close to being the exact person I want to be, I’m not going to let the past influence my future.
