Koby Agyeman: EDITOR AT LARGE
Once I had been a dreamer, a scared yet hopeful wide-eyed little freshman with big plans for high school. I spent the summer before freshmen year counting down the days left until school, where amazing and glamorous things were sure to happen. It took some time and effort, but eventually Glastonbury High School had been able to beat the Romantic hopefulness out of me and create the cynical skeptic sitting here today.
My first assignment in my freshman English class was to write a letter to myself listing all the goals I hoped to achieve that year. My English teacher would then keep our letters and return them at the end freshmen year. The letter was supposed to show how much we’d grown from the beginning of the year to the end.
I had just moved to the Glastonbury. The middle school I had gone to was a private school with fewer than two-hundred students and GHS had close to twenty-one hundred. I was alone and friendless in an unfamiliar world surrounded by over two thousand strangers as I wrote my letter in the school library (which took hours to find because this place was also enormous). But still, somehow, I was hopeful. I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, because I’m pretty sure I burned every copy of that letter when I received it at the end of 9th grade.
I think I wrote about how I was going to be the only freshman on the varsity basketball team. That I was going to star in the upcoming play M*A*S*H. How I was going to become the most popular kid in school and “raise hell all while” maintaining a perfect 4.0. I think I also wrote about how I was going to learn to fly by flapping my arms really, really hard.
Needless to say, none of that happened. I not only failed each and every one of my goals but I failed the assignment itself (horrendous grammar, said Mr. Marshall). When I read my letter, I couldn’t believe I had written this and earnestly believed that these fantasies could happen. I hated basketball, so why would I want or expect to be put on varsity? I was painfully shy, so starring in the play wasn’t happening. I hadn’t even known what MASH was or who this Hawkeye Pierce guy was. Becoming the most popular kid in school and “raising hell” was also out of the question. The curriculum at my middle school was completely different and much less difficult than GHS, so I spent freshmen year trying to catch up with the my peers while everyone else was joining clubs, making friends, and having fun.
I entered sophomore year guarded and angry at everything, preparing myself for suckiness at every turn. Eventually, I started to adjust more to public school, but I had lost a really important part of myself. The hardest part was not about or not joining clubs or being one of the “cool kids.” I always thought that I was alone because there was something incurably wrong with me. Something that would follow me even as I graduate and leave high school behind. I was always afraid that my entire life would be freshman year? Just a long string of getting my hopes until something blows up in my face. I now realize that it’s true that life is not going to be easy, but that just means that I have to work harder and not wait around hoping for things to get betters. This is a lesson I have kept with me for a while and I will keep with me as I move forward.
The beginning of high school was a difficult time for me, but I had survived and came out the other side. I may no longer be that hopeful little freshman, but I became a more grounded person. And I admit there’s still a romantic part of me that GHS wasn’t able to kill that guides me through dark times.