The Start of Senior Year

Today was the first day of my senior year.  It went extremely well.  I can only hope that the rest of the year goes as well as today.  For the most part, I'd say each year of high school has gotten better and better (although second semester of freshmen year was incredibly awesome and might beat sophomore year and half of junior year).

The only downside of today was the splitting headache I got towards the end of second block.  It just got worse as the day progressed, and it didn't go away until I'd been home for a few hours and taken migraine medicine.  I've always had bad headaches, but I never thought of them as migraines.  That migraine medicine worked so much better than any other pain medicine I've taken for headaches has before though.  (And of course, as soon as the headache went away, I became super hyper.)

The rest of this post is going to be an incredibly detailed summary of my day.  I'm sure not many people will want to read it, but I'm a really sentimental person.  I love being able to go back and read about days like this.  So, if you're at all interested, read on...

My mom drove my sister and me to school today, so we didn't have to take the bus.  Honestly, I like taking the bus on the first day because the bus driver usually wants to make sure you're going to ride again that year.  (I would like to take the time to say I'm not the only senior on our bus, even if my sister says it's sad I still ride the bus.  I hate driving, and I don't want to make one of my friends pick me up every day.)  We got to school pretty early.  Since we didn't have lockercombinations, everyone was just kind of standing around or sitting at tables in the commons.  I talked to Kayla and Megan for a bit before Ji and Laura showed up.  Then, Ji, Laura, Megan, and I sat at a table and talked until it was time for the school assembly in the auditorium.

Ji, Laura, and I sat together for the assembly.  We have the exact same assembly every year, and it's basically pointless.  They go over the handbook that everyone in there has heard before since it barely changes and the freshmen learned everything at orientation.

Speaking of freshmen, can I just say how weird it is watching them on the first day?  I was thinking all day today about how I felt when I was in their place four years ago.  I was scared out of my mind to start high school.  I was coming from a tiny (twelve kids in my eighth grade class) school to what I thought of as a huge (there are actually only about 400-500 students) high school, and I was terrified.  I can't even begin to describe to you how everytime I walked into a classroom I'd panic because I didn't know who to sit with.  Now, four years later, I walk in the first day, and I'm not nervous at all.  I walk into each new class, and I can always find a friend to sit with.  I know most of my teachers, and I'm not scared I'll fail a class or anything.  I'm not scared people will be mean to me.  (That was a big fear when I was a freshmen because it was my first time at public school.  I know that sounds bad.)  Now, I know basically everyone, and even though I'm extremely shy, most of the people (at least in my grace) know who I am.  It's such a big change from how things were four years ago today.  I didn't mean to rant about that.  Moving on to what my day was like.

The principal, vice principal, and guidance counselor all talked.  The most notable things they said were that our theme for the year.  I honestly can't think of what they said the theme is exactly, but it was something about choices I think.  They also went over all of the changes to the handbook.  There were three changes that I can remember.  1.  We can use cell phones during breaks and lunch as long as we turn them off before entering a classroom.  (You have no idea how much I love this rule.  I feel like it gives us a lot more freedom.  However, if the phone does go off in class, it's a much stricter punishment than before.)  2.  We can no longer carry backpacks to class.  They have to stay in our locker.  3.  We now have truancy court.  I'm hoping that will have no affect on me.

After the assembly, we went to our advisors.  Advisors are kind of like homeroom, but we only go there at the beginning of the school year, end of the school year, and to pick up report cards.  All we did in there was recieve another copy of our schedule, get a paper to get signed, get a login and passwork for the school computers, and tell her if we have Internet access at home.  After getting our locker combinations, we all went out to find our lockers  (for some reason they changed them after we'd had the same lockers two years in a row), and put all our stuff away.  We had to go back to advisors for a few minutes, but we didn't actually do anything.

Finally, we were able to go to our actual classes.  I have AP U.S. History for 1A.  It's technically a junior class, but I'm talking it because it wasn't offered last year and I love U.S. history.  I was worried about being the only senior in there, but that wasn't the case.  There's a decent amount of seniors in there.  It's kind of funny because almost all of us sit on one side of the classroom, so we're seperated from the juniors to a certain point.  I think I'm really going to love that class.  Laura's in it with me, I love U.S. history, we have the coolest U.S. history text book I've ever seen (yes, I am a nerd), and we have the same teacher I had for regular U.S. history last year and he's a pretty good teacher.  We were supposed to start reading chapter one of the text book tonight, and I'm actually really interested in it.  It definitely beats the AP world history book we had sophomore year.

For 1B I have AP English.  I can't figure out if having my two AP classes first thing in the morning is a good or bad thing.  Most of the time was spent discussing Brave New World, which we read over the summer and are having a test on tomorrow.  I think I'll like this class for the most part.  There are some awesome people in it, and the discussion over Brave New World was really good.  It's a lot different from the English classes I've had in the past.  Also, I've never had this teacher, but she seems like she'll be nice and interesting to listen to.

Ji and I then walked to yearbook for 2A.  I'm really excited for this class after the yearbook workshop I went to in July.  The teacher is new to our school this year, but she seemed really nice at the workshop and today.  I just hope the yearbook turns out awesome.  I'm worried some of the kids in the class won't really take it that seriously...  The teacher seems like she's going to make sure they do though, so hopefully everything goes well.

I have computer applications for 2B, and I'm pretty sure that'll be an easy class.  It's just about how to use programs like Microsoft Word and stuff.  We get to work at our own pace (I think she gives us certain assignments to be done in a week), and it seems fairly easy.  We also won't have any homework outside of class, so that's nice.  I sit next to Alyssa in the class, and that should be cool.  She was a part of that tiny class of twelve that I graduated from eighth grade with, and I don't really talk to her much since we have different groups of friends.

Lunch is the next thing on my schedule.  The lunch line is always insanely long on the first day for some reason, and they raised the prices of non-tray food, which sucks.  I ate with Laura, Haley (you have no idea how many Haleys there are at my school), and Jordan.  At some point, a boy who I remember being introduced as Austin joined us.  I guess he's new (there are a ton of new kids this year), and he knew Haley somehow.

I have peer tutoring for 3rd block, but that doesn't really start until next week.  Today, we had to go to the auditorium and get forms (that I need to remember to get signed tomorrow) and things like that.  It took her forever to come with the forms though.  I spent most of the time just daydreaming while everyone talked around me (my shyness has improved but not dissappeared) expect when I talked to David for about five minutes.  It was kind of awkward since I barely know him even though we had two classes together last year.  Afterwards, we basically wandered around the commons for the rest of third block.  That meant I got to talk to my friends in the other lunch period, such as Ji, Autumn, April, Alex, etc.  When their lunch is over, I spent most of my time studying for the Brave New World test.  Brandon interrupted for a little while, which was weird. We never talk to each other (unless you count when he was constantly around because he had a crush on my best friend).  Anyway, I'm not looking forward to getting teachers to sign that form tomorrow.  I can ask my AP U.S. history teacher to sign for social studies, but I'm going to have to go to one of my past English teachers.  I'm so awkward when I ask teachers things like that.

My last class of the day is government.  This should be a fun class.  I'm really interested in government, and even though it's a required senior class, I got lucky.  Most of the people in the class are the "smart" kids.  Everyone kept making jokes about Americans.  I can see it being a really fun class.

So, that was my first day.  You have no idea how long this took to write.  If you actually read the whole thing, I'm really impressed.  Let's hope I come back and read this sometime, so I'll feel like it was actually worth it.