Hello, Internet. For those who haven’t been reading my articles, last month I foolishly posted an article about my impressions of high school before actually going to high school. I claimed that high school would be overall more fun and interesting. However, upon the first day of high school, I was wracked with anxiety and stress from its seriousness… for about a day. High school’s actually pretty nice, despite all the work, and the rules make perfect sense. I’d just taken it a bit too seriously.
A lot of things have happened since I started high school. For example, I’ve joined two new clubs: the Computer Club and the Robotics Club. In the Computer Club, I joined a subgroup whose focus was game design and was caught off guard when the discussion immediately turned to what game we would immediately start to create. I asked about why we were immediately starting, and apparently the Computer Club teaches by experience. We also started quickly in Robotics Club. I had initially joined Robotics to meet with my new friend, but it turned out that he was in a different one; I’m still going to attend, though, because I really want to program (and control) a robot. Our team is named “Blue Cheese”, a concatenation (I learned this word while learning Python) of one of our school colors and the concept of “cheesing”, or putting holes in a robot’s metal beams to decrease their weight. I also manned a spot on our section of this year’s Makerfest.
My curricular activities have been interesting as well. As per my M.O., I’ve taken all advanced courses, and this year I’m attending Theater (because theater is a wonderful storytelling medium!… and also because I couldn’t take Creative Writing as an elective. Also, I’m taking it instead of P.E. because P.E. is horrible.). Also, I’m taking two classes associated with my Specialty Center: AP Computer Science Principles and Adv. English 9. I’ve noticed that the classes seem to be paying more attention to critical thinking than they used to – that is to say, World History II, a follow-up to some of the most rote-memorization-heavy classes in school, starts with the teacher discussing the fact that all of history is interpretation based on scattered evidence and proposing an alternate theory of the first events that I learned about from World History I.
All in all, I enjoy this new school. It’s a nice change of pace from Middle School, and so far I haven’t been tormented by the rest of the school for being a Freshman. I can only think of two problems off the top of my head: Math needs more critical thinking (if that’s even possible, it’d fit the theme of “more critical thinking” quite nicely), and the library needs more serial manga. I mean, when I looked at their “Manga and Graphic Novels” section, all I saw in terms of serial manga was two different volumes of Naruto that I’d already read. That said, I think this school is excellent, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the year. I will update as events occur. Thanks for reading, and I’ll be seeing you!
Cole is 15 years old. Cole has Asperger’s and is this site’s first young adult monthly contributor. Cole will write about a variety of topics. He started High School this year at an IT specialty center. He dearly loves pet sitting, and is a total pet whisperer!