my transition to high school

If you are a reader following along on this wonderful adventure, I think I should provide some background to my high school experience. Though I won't be writing this series chronologically, it can't hurt to start at the beginning. Let's talk about my transition from middle school to high school.

Giving a speech at my 8th Grade graduation. I was very nervous.

I went an arts magnet school called Fine Arts Interdisciplinary Resource (FAIR) School from fourth grade to eighth grade. My parents decided to switch me and my sisters from our home district for a lot of reasons, the primaries of which were the lack of racial diversity and underfunded arts education. So unlike most kids, I skipped one year of elementary school and went straight to big bad middle school. Yeah, I hung out with eighth graders when I was 9.

If you don't know about FAIR, the main purpose was to bring kids from a bunch of Minneapolis neighborhoods together to learn in a creative and supportive environment. The founders of the school wanted to expose inner-city kids to suburban kids and vice versa. They wanted to start mending ethnic and economic divides in society by letting kids of diverse backgrounds create and play together. I know a lot of my classmates had a different experience, but in my case, FAIR ended up being a sort of utopian place. My peers were friendly and non-judgmental, our teachers were fun and helpful, I made amazing friends, and I had the opportunity to exercise my imagination muscles on a daily basis. I learned that I loved acting, filmmaking, and everything beautiful and "artsy". I also learned I hate the word "artsy".

Sally, me, and Lizzie outside of FAIR. I was actually a freshman already in this photo visiting my "old stomping grounds".

When it came time to transfer back to the high school in my home district, I was one part psyched and one part scared shitless. I had watched more high school movies and TV shows than I could count (they are still my not-so-guilty pleasure to this day). I couldn't wait to meet new people, take cool classes, go to school dances, and maybe even get a boyfriend. High school was supposed to be the best four years of my life, according to the movies. Unfortunately in reality it didn't quite end up that way.

The transition from middle school to high school was bumpy to say the least. The biggest difference between FAIR and my high school, EPHS, is its size. Each grade at FAIR had less than 100 kids, so I knew the names of everybody in my grade and at the very least recognized everybody in the school. It was a pretty tight knit community. For example, the school receptionist always greeted me by name whenever I needed anything in the front office. My high school, on the other hand, is on the opposite end of the spectrum. It is known as the biggest high school in the state (other than Wayzata, which has like 10 more students than Eden Prairie, so we don't count that). On top of that, I only knew a couple of people when I transfered, my neighbors Teagan, Maxine (who also went to FAIR with me), and Riley. Imagine walking into a building with over 3,000 students and only knowing 3 people. That was me.

But that's not even the worst part. No no, we're just getting started. We've already established that I barely knew anybody. Usually, that's not a problem for me. I'm a pretty social gal, so making friends isn't hard if they are willing to talk to me too. My freshman year of high school, this was not the case. Everyone already had friends. Cliques were already established. I was the odd girl out. Nobody was really interested in making friends, least of all with a dorky art-school kid who nobody recognized or cared about getting to know. I also realized that I didn't really want to be friends with anybody in my classes. They were judgmental, rude, and entitled, nothing like the people at FAIR that I loved so much. I made some new friends through a team I participated in called Destination Imagination, but the school is so big that I was lucky if I passed one of my teammates in the hall. So, I ate lunch by myself in the library every day. And I couldn't call up my friends from FAIR to hang out with after school because they all lived too far away for us to get together more than once a month, if that.

My lovely Destination Imagination team in Tennessee our sophomore year. (from left to right: Riley, Joey, Me, Julia, Chloe, Claire)

This intense loneliness wasn't like anything I'd ever experienced. Sure, I had some acquaintances, but I had no friends I knew I could rely on. As an extrovert, this was really hard on me. I mean, I hate walking to class by myself. Spending every day with no one to talk to candidly was almost unbearable.Thank goodness I had my sisters to talk to. Seriously, if we didn't hang out, I have no idea what would have happened to me. I really hope they isn't reading this because we hardly ever say honestly kind thing about each other, but being able to go through all of that crap with built-in friends to support each other through it all was pretty damn lucky.

All that being said, my lack of friends was partially my own fault. I was so nervous about succeeding academically that I didn't join any clubs or do any extracurriculars until second semester. Second semester is when Speech started. While I didn't meet any of my close friends on the Speech team, it gave me an opportunity to step outside of myself for a couple of hours every day and talk to people other than my sister and my mom. I also realized that not everybody at my high school was awful. The people on the Speech team were genuinely nice and excited to be working on something that they were passionate about. We can talk about my love-hate relationship with the Speech team later, but all you need to know now is that my first year on the team allowed me to burst this weird social bubble I had blown for myself and act more like my outgoing self.

Some of the Speechies (back row: Sawyer, Rachel, Michelle, Tanvi, Disha, Crystal. front row: Bethany, Sanji, Zeinab, Me, Ishvinder, I don't remember???, Sienna)

I hate to say that after joining the Speech team everything changed for the better, because it was still rough around the edges, but it definitely acted as the catalyst I needed to spin my transition in a positive direction. I did more activities, I was much more social both inside and outside class, and I made some really cool connections. I did hang out with some sketchy people freshman and sophomore year when I was desperate for human connection, but I learned a lot about myself and my surroundings. I eventually found an amazing group of friends in the Drama Club.

This story is fairly mild compared to a lot of the stories I've heard about transfer students. Even so, to all of my fellow transfer students out there, I feel your pain. I feel the awkwardness and the loneliness. All I can say is that you have to put yourself out there. It is scary and uncomfortable, but you just have to embrace that and go for it!

Some buds the summer after my sophomore year. (from left to right: Maya, me, Jenna, Madi, and Annabelle. Chloe is taking the photo)

It took until my junior year before I really felt like I belonged. Now, I absolutely adore my friends. All of them, even the ones I've only met in the past couple of months. I am proud that I didn't loose myself in the process of making and keeping friends. Sometimes, weird moments come up where I don't understand a reference or inside joke from the years before I came back to Eden Prairie, but for the most part, I figured it out. Another side effect of my transfer-student-status is that I am also notoriously bad with names. Seriously, I don't know who anybody is. If you are trying to gossip with me, good luck buddy, because I will have no idea who you are talking about.

This was a MONSTER of a post, so congratulations to you if you managed to read the whole thing. And Thank you!

If you have a story about a difficult transition that you want to share, please don't hesitate to tweet me @theonechameleon or email me at camille.ramos18@gmail.com.

Anyway....
Catch you on the flip side,
Camille