The Transition (Entry #2)

Everyone assumed I came from what is called a "nuts-and-berries" school. My transition to the world of public high school was one of the most profound and drastic changes that I've ever experienced, and was in essence, the event that marked my transition from childhood to adulthood. Having just left a school where there were 13 people in my grade, I had grown accustomed to close-knit family relationships with all of my classmates. However, being thrown in to a class of over 200 students, I was out of my element to say the least. I had to re-learn how to develop friendships and relationships with students and teachers whom I had never met before, which was in a strange sense, a rebirth. In a way i could embody Locke's "tabula rasa" principal to my introduction into the high school, because I could reinvent myself without the weight of my awkward-middle-schooler past. The public school system really allowed me to learn how to "play the game" so to speak, of taking copious amounts of tests, and really find the motivation to make the most out of my high school experience. I am most content when I am in the throes of the school week, constantly pushing myself to maximize my potential to learn new things, since I believe the knowledge empowers me. This transition also forced me into what I'd like to call "subsidized independence" in my family, while they still supported me, I was truly left to my own devices when it came to finding my way in the high school. The transition from the small, progressive school where everyone knew each other so in depth it drove us crazy, to the large high school where I found true friends and academic motivation was point at which I felt like both a young child in the infancy of socialization, and a wise, experienced entity, who had just entered the adult world.