Best Years to Come

Hello Class of 2020,

These past few years have been one heck of a roller coaster. High school was not at all what it is cracked up to be. I remember having different family members of mine telling me “high school was some of the best years of their life” and honestly shesh they must have had one miserable life after high school. I sure hope there are better things to come then four miserable years of practically living in a building that may or may not have been up to code in all of the health inspector criteria. Now let’s talk about the “best years of my life” starting with my Freshmen year. 

 Now if you know me or even pay attention to who is in your class you would know I was not at Oak Hill Freshmen year. Instead, I attended school at Monmouth Academy.  Monmouth is a small school where the biggest class to graduate from Monmouth was 75 students. In the town of Monmouth every school is within a half a mile from each other. Well as a middle schooler if you were in 7th or 8th grade you went to the high school for gym class. So as an incoming freshman it wasn’t as terrifying going to a “new school” because we had already gone back and forth from the high school for 2 years before.  Honestly, the scariest part of freshman year MOBY week. This happened during freshman week where all of the Freshmen go the first week of school on an “educational camping trip”.  MOBY is an acronym, it stands for My Own Back Yard. This is when we go up to Acadia National Park for a week with no phones, no showering.  We hiked, whale watched and learned about rocks. Once we got back and got school rolling everyone kind of fell into place with friend groups.  I had a large friend group so I always hung out with my friends at lunch but Monmouth in many ways reminds me of a cliche high school movie. During lunch there are the “popular kids” then the nerds and so on and so forth. Looking back at that compared to Oak Hill, Oak Hill is very much different from that. At OHHS I never saw any of that, everyone just ate with everyone there were no “factions” where people were discluding other people. Now I’m not trashing Monmouth in any way, I’m just stating cold hard facts. But anyway now onto my Sophomore year, which unknowingly would be my last at Monmouth.

Sophmore year was one of the more eventful years of my life. I started off the year by loading up on classes, most of which were classes upperclassmen took. I was cramming in double English classes, taking advanced math, and had government and politics all in my first semester. I was passing all of my classes with flying colors. By the end of my first semester, I was on the honor roll and was feeling pretty confident in my classes. The second semester I was taking my last required English class for Monmouth and was thinking about taking English 101 at school my junior year through UMA. Looking back though I have to think the most ironic thing that had to of come out of all of this is the fact that at the end of my sophomore year I would be getting ready to move into English 101 for my junior year but since I decided to make the switch to Oak Hill where they didn’t provide English 101 I backtracked to regular high school English classes. Also, almost every semester at Oak Hill there was always at one point in time I was worried I wasn’t going to pass the semester or even the year.  I’ve had a pretty close friend group for most of my life at Monmouth and it really hadn’t changed as the school year went on we just drifted further and farther away until I really didn’t hang out with anyone from Monmouth anymore. I got thinking and realized I had a lot of friends at Oak Hill from way back when I was a little fetus back at Wales Central School (r.i.p) and realized maybe I’d be a better fit at Oak Hill.  By the end of my sophomore year I had decided to make the switch. At the end of the year I was sad I was going but my excitement to go somewhere new was so much stronger. So onto the start of Oak Hill being blessed with my presence 5 days a week.

  The first day of school my junior year felt like I was a Freshmen all over again. Except worse, it really was a new school and I really didn’t know a lot of people.  If I’m being honest I think the one person who saved me in the first semester of Junior year was Julia Nöel.  Julia and I had become friends in our 6th grade year when I went to Oak Hill to play travel basketball.  These relationships formed when the basketball team went on to help me once I moved to Oak Hill because I had some familiar faces to see in the hallways.  Now I must say my biggest problem first moving to Oak Hill was navigating the hallways.  The hallways in Monmouth are easy, there are three floors, the main floor, the second level, and the basement. Every single floor is formatted the exact same, one straight hallway with classes on either side like the language/history wing at Oak Hill just much larger. Well as a new kid the weirdly shaped school with lots of twists and turns confused me.  Also, Oak Hill has almost twice as many kids as Monmouth so at the end of every class, I feared for my life because I thought I was going to get trampled.  Coming into my junior year there really weren’t a lot of options for good elective classes so I decided to try welding. At first, I had absolutely no clue what to expect. When I saw the teacher the first thing I thought was “great, an old teacher.  He’s probably going to be super stuck up and boring” well boy was I wrong. At first, I’m not going to lie Mr. Mac scared me because he’s very loud and didn’t seem at all that nice. But the more I went to class the more I realized I actually enjoy welding.  By the end of the semester, Mr. Mac had convinced me welding would be a good trade to go into. Between being a girl and it being in high demand I could be rich so I decided to look into it more. At the end of my junior year, I went to talk to Mrs. Gagnon and she signed me up for welding through LRTC for senior year. Coming to the end of my junior year felt surreal because when I came back to the school it would officially be my last year of high school. I was excited to start. Now let’s dive right into my long awaited for Senior year. 

  Let’s start off by just saying my senior year was probably one of the laxest years of high school. The first semester I had LRTC and Woodworking one day and English and math the other. On the days I had English and math I had early release so that was pretty nice.  For the most part, it was pretty easy going, English and math were the same and Mr. Mac had not changed a bit.  LRTC on the other hand was a whole new kind of challenge. At the start of the school year it was pretty stressful because I was yet again going to a whole nother school I didn’t know but this time you could legitimately get lost in the school if you didn’t pay attention. And on top of that, multiple schools were going there, not just one. At first, I enjoyed the class but very quickly realized welding was not for me. Way too many places for error and there were no redos in welding.  I obviously had to stick to it though but knew this was not what I wanted to do. The second semester rolls around and I shorten my schedule even more now both red and white days. I’m getting out no later than 12:30. Not going to lie, it was definitely the way to end my senior year. Speaking of ending, I remember sitting in math class on a Friday afternoon talking about COVID-19 and everyone wondering if we are going to have school next week and me going home wishing that we wouldn’t. Well gesh, go figure the one time I get my wish it ends up ruining the rest of my senior year. It’s just kind of hitting me now but every senior in America and even most of the world are all going to miss important experiences everyone else would usually get and have as a memory. Whether it be spring sports, getting to march across a stage to get your diploma in front of all of your loved ones, project grad, or even your class trip. All of that is being taken away from thousands upon thousands of seniors. Now I’m not going to sit here and say I’m not enjoying getting to wake up at 10:30 instead of 6:30 every morning but still it would’ve been nice to be able to give my parents their rose or walk across that stage for that diploma cover or well yeah you get the point this sucks for everyone. I think I really have to say thank you. Thank you class of 2020 for these crazy ups and downs.  Thank you to every friend who stuck by my side through this crazy roller coaster called high school. Now I’m gonna scoot on outta here. Catch you on the flippity flip. 

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