Happy Misfit

When I was in middle school and beginning of high school (6-9th grade). I was a black sheep, I was a bit different from the rest of not only my class but my entire school.

I used to go to a small Roman Catholic school that was very sports, religion, and language-arts oriented: three things I am not too good at as I am better and more comfortable with stem classes and clubs such as the robotics team. While I was at this school, I was an outcast for the most part because of a lot of things, other than just what I enjoyed in classes almost everything differed from my fellow classmates. Especially my political and religious beliefs since most of the students at the school were far-right conservatives and were not very open-minded when it came to different beliefs or religions. Including my political and religious beliefs which a large portion of the student body disliked as they thought of me as a crazy pagan fascist which out of all of those I am not as I am technically a non-religious leftist and why they thought that I cannot figure out why. But as time went on, I found a group of friends and we were more considered misfits, but even in that small group of friends, I was a misfit and as far as misfits go. I was the biggest outlier even down to my hobbies. Most of the school liked more as the school called it “refined entertainment fit for a truly refined person” such as golf and sports like water foul hunting. Now between these two, I am not much of a fan of either when I was in middle school and beginning of high school you could always find me in the computer lab doing 3D design in the far back corner next to the schools 3D printer while simultaneously doing homework till 4 or even later till I can leave to go home.
While I was in middle school and freshman year of high school I was perfectly content with doing this since I had convinced one of my friends to start hanging out with me in the computer lab after school. At that point, we were both extremely happy just doing schoolwork, and doing 3D design on the school pcs. Where we would work on school projects and personal projects alike to the point where we had a routine, for the entire school day starting at 6:30 am. When I would get to school and would meet any teachers I may have to see about questions on homework or redo any classwork. Until my friend would arrive at school at 7 when we would sit in our 2 favorite teacher’s classrooms. Alternating days depending on our schedules either watching Monty Python episodes with our art teacher and talking about movies and games or in our science teacher’s classroom talking about future assignments, what’s happening in the world, and just nonsense. Until 7:45 when classes would start when then, we would go to class and get all of our classwork and homework done for the first 3-4 classes we have that day during the first period. once done we would go to our other classes and until the end of the day with nothing interesting or noteworthy occurring and as soon as the school would end we would run to the school chef (the nicest person I have ever met and the best chef I have ever seen). We would help him clean up and move packages of food and drinks away for the night and then go to the computer lab where we would do school work and 3D design till we had to leave, and repeating the process all over again the next day.

Now once we had a routine, me and my friend were considered outsiders to most everyone but at the time neither of us really cared or paid attention to this. Sure we ended up joining some clubs our freshman year, but we were still outsiders to the rest of the school and those clubs though. Then sophomore year came around the corner and summer hit and I was told were going to be moving(we ended up just changing to a public school instead of moving towns), but this kind of hit me and my friend like a truck, and then we both realized we were outsiders at the school and that there wasn’t anything else there for either of us other than a few clubs. At that point, it was a realization though that our middle school years and freshman year were kind of boring to most, but we had the time of our lives and even if it seemed like it sucked(which we had our moments when it definitely did.) But we didn’t care because we had the time of our lives and we enjoyed it the way we wanted to and we got more out of it from the stuff we enjoyed than everyone else probably did. Whether that be learning new skills from designing 3D models on school computers. To building cardboard sleds together for sledding competitions during the winter carnival the school hosted to racing our sled at the ski resort by our school and running over a close friend of both our families we didn’t know we both knew. We enjoyed it and made memories that we both love and joke about in engineering class together, Or others we will never mention but will always look silently look at each other. When something that reminds us of memories that have happened and have a good laugh and confuse everyone around us.

image from:”#3D printing is a beautiful thing. #3Dprinting #3ddesign #classroomlife #teacherlife #teacherthings” by mikelikes2teach is marked with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.