This I Believe......

I will be the first person to admit that I don’t like change. I really hate it, at the same time I know that change can be a good thing. I am a simple person. I like when things are predictable and constant. Change is scary and the point of change is not knowing what is going to happen and I don’t like that. I know that things can not stay the same forever, but when you get used to something it is hard to let go. Like going to college in the fall, I have spent the last 4 years going to the same place, doing the same things and seeing the same people.

My life changed at the end of freshman year. My family and I moved in with my Aunt because my mom was getting a divorce from her husband, my brother and sisters father. We stayed there around 7 months. Then we moved to Saco. When you depend on someone for most of your life you kind of get used to it so when we moved and my sister, brother and me only had my mother it is different. To change from one parent to 2 was weird. And moving to Saco. I spent much of my young life in Dayton, where you had to drive to get places the nearest store was 20 minutes away instead of 5 and having neighbors. None of us liked moving and changing everything, but we got over as soon as we realized that everything that happened was worth it and a good thing for all of us. And now I am going to college on my own and having to change almost everything is a change that may be worth it in the end but from the beginning point I am not really liking it much.

I believe in change even though I do not like it. I am not entirely sure that makes any sense to anyone but to me change is what made my life what it is today. Not liking change and appreciating the impact that it causes is a paradox, but that’s me. If I were not moving and living with one parent I can guarantee you that I would not be going to an amazing college next fall, I would be a miserable human being, and I would not have the relationship that I have with my family that I have now.

In Like A Child

2007 I entered high school. It was not fun and exciting. I almost threw up. Going into high school I was this 14 year old quiet girl sitting in the corner. Now 4 years later I'm a 18 year old quiet girl sitting in the corner who occasionally gets up and gets loud. Ocasionally!

When I was 14 and entering high school I was literally the quiet girl sitting in the corner. I didn't like it but I'm not the "out there" kind of person. I didn't join in on anything the first 2 years of high school. I woke up, went to school, did homework and went to bed and repeated that everyday. It seemed so much easier than putting myself out there and interacting with people when I didn't have to.

Now I'm 18 and I get out sometimes and I participate more. I'm not sure what happened, I think it was that I became best friends with the MOST obnoxious, loudest, hyper, crazy girl known to man that pushed me out of the corner or that I realized that sitting in the corner wasn't helping me.
to me I don't think I changed that much. But to my mother I have changed a lot and reminds me everyday.

I would like to say that I changed on my own realizing I was boring person and wanted to change, but I can't. Tiffany Clemens. The loudest, obnoxious, crazy, hyper person known to man. Ever. Who is also my best friend. She made me not so boring and not so quiet. She pushed me and sometimes I hate her for it but when it comes down to it I owe her I would be the girl who skated through high school without ever really doing anything.

A Lesson Learned

I have learned a lot in the past 4 years like: how to graph hard equations or write a better essay, use stickies when reading a book in English will help a ton when it comes to writing the essays. I have also learned stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with reading or writing essays or math equations like: never walk up or down the stairs and text at the same time, when walking between a row of desks watch out for backpack straps they like to sneak up on you when your not looking, movie time doesn’t equal nap time movie material sometimes it becomes test material, cramming never works.

4 years of high school and I learned a lot. Some of it I won’t ever use again and some it will be useful for a long time. The one major lesson I learned I didn’t really learn from a teacher or a class. Or learning to do something. It is that being the quiet girl in the corner won’t get me as far. Sitting in a corner instead of joining will hold me back. That being the quiet girl in the corner is what I’ll always be if I don’t participate.

In 4 years I never joined anything except chorus but that was for a credit to graduate. I never participated in sports, groups or sometimes in class. I didn’t even want to go to any of the dances Homecoming, Winter carnival even prom because dancing and being loud isn’t who I am. I kept thinking to myself that I would join next year that, that would be better and when the next year came around I came up with an excuse to get myself out of what I promised the year before. I figured if I sit in the corner and don’t move that the year would go by and the 4 years would go by fast but I was wrong. I do regret not doing anything.

A lesson I learned during my 4 years of high school was that being the quiet girl in the corner made me boring and predictable. It made me a safe person.

A Sense of Place

I didn’t really need to think about a place on campus that meant something to me. The minute I read the paper I knew exactly what I was going to write about. I don’t really remember freshman year and sophomore year was boring, slow and to be honest I don’t remember much from that year either. It was all a blur of homework and test. Junior year was my favorite and the only one I remember most of. I didn’t have any hard classes like Spanish which I had freshman and sophomore year. I didn’t have any hard teachers and all my classes were fun and easy. But the best out of the entire year was Algebra 2 with Mrs. Rousseau.

I’m not a math person. I hate it with a passion and I am not really good at it. I grew up in Dayton and they didn’t really teach us any math so when I got to higher grades all my math teachers didn’t understand that I didn’t understand any of it. But Mrs. Rousseau did. The best thing was that there wasn’t any projects or essays that we had to do. Just homework and tests. Which wasn’t that hard. But I was actually could not wait to have math class. I looked forward to it and I never looked forward to math. By the end of third block I was actually excited to go to class. Thinking back now the science wing is my favorite place. I had most of my good classes and it’s closer to the cafe.

But the thing I remember most out of 4 years and lots of memories was that I could be myself. I could talk in front of everyone and I could talk to the teacher, I wasn’t afraid to mess up. I like being able to participate in class and know that I knew what I was talking about. The other classes the teachers just taught, but this class the entire class talked about everything. Sometimes I laughed so hard my stomach hurt and I was crying. We spent half the class talking about everyone’s day and the other half going over the homework.

To make things better Sarah Hoodlette and Tiffany Clemens, two of my best friends, were in that class with me. We were always talking and having fun. We never got anything accomplished in class besides the weekend plans. Which never involved the math homework. We worked on everything together which got us in trouble because we never really got anything done. And we talked a lot. Besides the class was the last block and having math first or last block is bad it is either to way early or you just want to go home and focusing on the equation to figure out the radius of a circle was out of the question.

Third Vignette

Six Flags
Six flags was fun. Waiting in line get food just to eat it wait in line for a ride and then throw up the food you waited 20 minutes in line for. Rude people, rude ride people, rude food vendors and rude parking people. The best part was the ride home. My aunt, cousins and I had stayed in an hotel and we left for Maine in the morning. A normal ride from Six Flags to Waterboro Maine is 4 and half hours it took us 11 hours. We left at 8 in the morning and we got home at 7 at night. We all got up and got dressed and did everything that we had to do before we left. My aunt owns a jeep sitting 5 people in a 4 person jeep. Not easy. My Aunt let my cousin Derek drive which took us so long. The 3 of us in the back decided to take a nap we were asleep for and hour and half. We fell asleep in mass and woke up 5 minutes away from the Canadian border in Vermont. That was not where we wanted to be. We drove around a lot that day. After 3 states, 5 pit stops, 13 different turnpike exits, 1 food place that looked like it came straight out of Stephen King novel we made it home. Everyone thought it was hilarious and they turned it into a family joke. They got a kick out of it for a long time. It was fun. Well besides the food place. It was creepy and scary.

Crayon Color

My crayon color today would be gray. Because I'm tired and exhausted. It reminds me of when it rains and the sky is gray and its dark in the middle of the day when the sun should be shining and I should be happy, full of energy. I like it when its like that. Gray because it fits my mood today, wishing that I could stay in bed and it be all rainy outside and have a fresh start the next day.

Knowing something I didn't want to know

A time I knew something I really didn't want to know was when I was in 2nd grade and my mom told me why my name was different then hers and my siblings. I didn't really want to know, but I would have figured it out eventually. My Mom took me out to lunch and she told me why. My dad is different than my siblings. She showed me pictures and all sorts of stuff in my baby box. Even in 2nd grade I understood what she told me meant and it changed a lot of stuff. I didn't want to know because I thought it was bad, but turns out it wasn't that bad. Even though I didn't want to know and even though I was only in 2nd grade everything was different.