it749216: His Life, His Reality

CHAPTER 3 - IJHI

A majority of students would think high school sucks. As one senior student in that school has once said, "Four years of high school for nothing." Maybe he was really uninterested in the amount of schoolwork in that school. He does sometimes go to some events and has a lot of friends in particular. They're unexpectedly troublesome. I would despise them, but they graduated out of that school anyway with their diplomas so who cares. To me, freshman year might be possibly, but not perfectly, one of my favorite years to experience. It's a new fresh start to start high school and hopefully my social skills will improve and I will make a lot of friends. Maybe sooner I might even try to be the most popular student on the campus. Sorry, I probably took it too far. I should stick to making friendships before getting the likes from everybody. If you're wondering if my four friends were still there, two of them never returned back for high school. After they graduated, one moved to a different high school and another moved to another different high school. But that doesn't mean I have less friends yet. There was an international student who seemed new and was in the same grade as me. He can speak and understand English, but he's more used to his own language. To me, he can only speak English because I don't understand his language. He sometimes asks me questions about the background of the school and even wants further explanation about the school's events. Although I did know about this school for at least a year, I tried my best to answer all of them. We didn't talk much throughout this school year, but I know it would take some time for him to adjust. He managed to find another friend that could speak the same language as him. The school had some periods that were not major subjects. Extracurricular classes...you know, something additional. I had computer applications, which are learning how to use the online applications such as slideshow presentations or spreadsheets. Another class I had was life skills, which were learning how to sew, cook, and do finances...the necessities of life. In my opinion, I think extracurricular classes are more fun than major classes. You don't need to study these classes because you won't get tested on them. You just learn and have fun. That's it. I started to become a little more social in this grade. I made a few more friends along the way. Maybe this is it. Maybe I can try to be popular in this school after all. Until...the global pandemic happened. COVID-19. All the schools went into lockdown and we were forced to go into virtual learning. It's like your hopes have gone up high, but then an unpredictable occurrence happens and it all comes crashing down. And the freshman experience just ends there. All the events are canceled and were staying in this virtual experience until the end of the school year. Sophomore year marks the beginning of the whole virtual school experience. Most students would think it's good news to them because they get to stay home and do their own work there without the hassle of traffic. I mean, I would agree with them, but what about the social interaction in the classes? It might get worse. If I were to summarize my sophomore experience in a few words, it would be virtual learning and homework. That's pretty much it. Hanging out with friends is not included. Junior experience was about the same thing. Virtual learning and homework. I know, definitely more boring than you think. Except the only difference between my sophomore year and my junior year is that in my junior year, students can have the choice to return to the school in person or to stay home for virtual learning. I don't why I chose the virtual learning again. I guess I wasn't ready yet to come back in person. Bad idea. Not only I had to go through another dull year of the same thing like last year, but we can't go to any events if we're in virtual learning, which sucks. Well, it's obvious that some students are online from another far city, state, or country and they can't go there. This one is not important but, have you ever had the experience of giving a presentation while you're on virtual? When you share your screen of the presentation and present, both of the students in person and virtual can see it easily. Both of them can also hear you easily. Meanwhile, a student in person would share a presentation and only the in person students would see and hear it easily. The virtual students can barely see it from a distance and hear the presenter with a quieter volume. As a virtual student, you know where my scenario lands. It was nerve-racking, and I'm glad that my camera was off but I was literally perspiring at home. Who knew that this kind of experience would make me sweat nervously in my own home. How many times did I had this before? About six times. I wish to never encounter that again. So the sophomore and junior years were painfully average. It was about to be my last year in this high school. Senior year. Did I choose virtual learning for a third time? Absolutely not. I already thought to myself, I can't just end my high school experience like this. Maybe if I go back in person, I can meet my friends again and feel like it's kind of back to normal once more. Well, I know the virus is still around, but it's been starting to subside. And that's exactly what I did. I went back to that school. I never thought I feel so free from that virtual school. I realized I still need to complete some extracurricular classes for my diploma. I didn't take any of those while I was in virtual learning because technically those type of classes you have to be there. I should have chose to go to in person as a junior, but once again, I just didn't feel ready yet...which led to instant regret. Scratch that...yeah, maybe I should have went in person. Out of all my high school years, my senior year was considered to be the easiest now. I put a lot of hard work on the major subjects and completed most of the requirements for my diploma. The extracurricular classes I took in my last year were industrial arts, photography, and ceramics. Let me just summarize on each of these of how it went for me. Industrial arts was like all work, with little learning. This includes room demolition and painting and fixing vehicles. Our learning is basically finding the problem, and then searching up the problem on Google or YouTube, which that is confusing to me because I never fixed anything like this in my lifetime. At least I passed this class, but this is not my thing. Ceramics for me is more worse than industrial arts. It's basically working with clay. I had a hard time in that class because I wasted the clay like a hundred times and there are some cases the form I try to make falls apart, it gets too dry because I didn't make the clay wet enough, or it even gets too wet because I put too much water on it. Three straight months and still no achievement on making a clay bowl. Therefore, also not my thing. I actually dropped this class because obviously I can't pass this class unless I made something, which I never did. I replaced that class for a piano class instead. You'll know why I picked that class later on. Last but not least, photography. Just taking photos from a camera and editing them like adjusting the exposure, brightness, and sharpness. Out of all the extracurricular classes, this happened to be the simplest. All I have to do is just take photos according to the prompt, edit them, and submit. That's all. There was a few difficulties like glare, blur, and even a few photobombs in pictures that could have been perfect. Overall, I managed to resolve them by replacing them pictures that are actually good. I wouldn't do this kind of thing in the future, but I could use this as a hobby once in a while. But there's one huge problem when I was in the school. My friends were gone. Actually, one of them left earlier as we're approaching to high school. But another one left once I came in. The third one was still here, but to be honest, he's one of my friends that doesn't talk to me that much. I would have been still friends with him if I spoke about something interesting, but I just don't know what to talk about. Oh, and remember that international student I made friends with? He just became popular all of a sudden. He's now one of the soccer players on the high school team. I think he must have chose in person when he was a junior, decided to try out for the soccer team, and he made some friends there. Then those friends probably introduced him to other friends which I guess that's what made them popular. Lucky dude. I wonder why I haven't thought of that. So here's the annoying part. I have to make new friends now since most of them disappeared or I'm not really into talking to them because of their interests. Did I successfully do it? Nah, it's all gone. I just became anti-social thanks to the virus. I don't know what's really wrong with me. I guess it looks like I lost all my social skills and I can't seem to start a conversation although it sounds so easy. But what do I talk about!? If I say something not exciting, no one would care to answer and that would be considered a useless question. So I was mostly silent and less talkative for the rest of my last school year. Doesn't sound like a good ending to the experience, but this is what led to here in this story and now you know. The twelfth grade graduation seemed a bit different than the eighth grade one. Eighth grade graduation was getting some congratulations from my classmates and it was packed there. Twelfth grade graduation has way more packed but I barely got any good wishes and compliments. It just felt less exciting than my elementary graduation. You know, everything changed from this whole K-12 experience. School is like I like it, then I hate it, then I like it again, and then I hate it again. An average pattern. School is getting harder and harder and it makes people to think if they should drop out. I thought of that once, but I still continued on. The good news is even though there were hard classes that are trying to make me fail, I passed through every grade. Come to think of it, I used to have straight As in elementary school. In middle school, it was still mostly As, but a few Bs. In high school...a mix of As and Bs, a few Cs, and even a D. Dang it. So much for trying to get perfection. So, there you have it. That is my whole education experience that I can remember. My social skills have diminished, but I'm working on getting it back and hopefully get some friends for once and have them forever and not lose them. That's a little too much to say for friends, but that's my honesty. If I am struggling to make friends in school, is there another way I can develop it somewhere else?