To Whom it May Concern

           Like many of you, parent-teacher conferences have been the bane of my academic existence. I can remember anxiously waiting at home while my mom was consulting with my teachers, fearing what was going to come of their conversation. And each time she would debrief with me, her report would always include the following: 

• “You smile a lot.”

• “You’re doing well in class.”

• “You’re too quiet..” 

Ummm, what? 

When I was younger, I struggled with confidence. A lot. In fact, one of my earliest memories is hiding behind my grandma’s legs because my cousins were visiting and I didn’t want to interact with them (I was probably five and clearly a poster child for timid kindergarteners). All of this is to say that much of my life epitomizes my introvertedness, but it doesn't reflect how much I ached to change that. 

Actual totally entirely real photo of me as a tiny child

In middle school, I entered each school year with one goal: to get to a point where I could confidently raise my hand in class without feeling debilitatingly apprehensive about what would come out of my mouth. And each year, I failed horribly. So when I got to high school, I ventured to refocus my goal and set my final deadline as graduation – a date that is 18.5 days away (at the time I am writing this).* But of course, I (like all of you) had absolutely no clue that over the course of those four years in high school, I would be missing a little less than half of it due to a global pandemic that would shut our world down for a year-and-a-half and change all of us forever. 

*I’m not lying, I swear!

Oops, this is turning into a bit of a serious blog post, and if there’s anything I’ve learned throughout my senior year, it’s that my classmates are mentally incapable of taking anything seriously (love you guys!!)

Evidence (an actual picture of what makes up my heart!)

So let’s refocus.

            The class of 2023 has been through a lot, just as we all have since March of 2020. But for us, it is a bit more intense at times. Okay, maybe not a bit. After all, it felt like we were all abandoned in the middle of our freshman year of high school. As if it were a breaking news segment, our government and school administration had quite literally told us to stand by during a “brief” interruption from our regularly-scheduled programming. But we returned nearly two years later having missed the most influential time for the high-school-pecking-order-maturation process. And our “regularly-scheduled programming” ended up switching to a 12-hour non-stop movie marathon. None of us were ready.

Needless to say, returning to junior year of high school after having our lives uprooted took a lot of refocusing and stamina-rebuilding. But we did it. And I learned so much from the process. 

Like all of you know, the second semester of 11 AP is largely discussion based. You do the readings, answer the journal questions, and come to class ready to have a full-fledged debate about the material (at least, that’s how Dr. Steltenkamp operated his class). And during this time, I often dreaded the work. I had a full course load of (trigger warning) AP Chemistry and math classes (yes, classes…don’t ask me why I took two in one year because I’m still trying to answer that myself). English was at times a huge pain, particularly before spring break. 

It was probably 1:00 AM, I still had Spanish homework to finish, and had spent my afternoon exhaustedly attempting to scramble through problem sets and chemistry textbook exercises. I was stressed, sleep-deprived, and entirely ready to give up. But Dr. Stelt knew how to fear-monger, and I was not going to be the kid he scolded with an irritated and depleted expression, demanding I “bring it in tomorrow” while he marked me down on his despised clipboard during one of his deplorable spontaneous journal checks (you all know what I’m talking about). So I sucked it up, and opened “The Language of Composition,” but I didn’t get very far before I broke down in tears and cried my way through my reading and journal assignments.

But as Kelly Clarkson once said, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Turns out she was right. 

Despite torturing myself through the class, 11 AP proved to be a transformative experience for me. As you may recall, I used to struggle immensely with speaking up in class, but 11 AP, regardless of its lengthy writing assignments, ended up teaching me a lot about having a voice in the classroom. Before I even realized it, I wasn’t concerned about who would judge me for saying the wrong thing, and I found value in a lot of the excerpts from our textbook. Oddly enough, I started to enjoy them, and I looked forward to having the intellectual discussions we often shared in class. I know, I know…very nerdy. But it’s true. And I think my unfortunate lack of sleep and desire to swiftly get through each school day weirdly pushed me to lose my over-bearing self-consciousness. So I have my crazy junior-year schedule, the pandemic, burn out, and my 11 AP English textbook to thank, because that painful experience may not have always been the most enjoyable (a grave understatement), but it made me the person I am today and helped me realize who I am working to become. 

While I can’t say that I am the most confident person and never doubt myself in the classroom, I can say that I have grown in unimaginable ways. Coming out of high school after re-learning how to function in society was no easy task, but we all did it. And we are resilient and empowered because of it. Even if that resilience stems from a concoction of a virus, a textbook, and the fear of my 11th grade English teacher. 

One final picture of my cat!!

And SURPRISE I have a dog too :) I’ve been living a lie this whole time!!