My High School Memoir

High school has gone by so fast. It seems like just yesterday that I was on my way up to the school getting ready to turn in all of my papers for freshman registration. I felt so old then thinking that I was cool now that I was in high school. But looking back on that time now I realized that I was still so young and inexperienced. High school has taught me so many lessons, many of which I will carry in with me all the way throughout my  life. I have made so many new friends and learned so much about myself and the people around me that it is sad to think that in just a few days we will be all over. We are all going to have to move on with our lives. But I know that none of us will ever forget the memories that we made in high school.

                Freshman year was scary to say the least. Freshmen never get any respect and most of them get taunted or messed with somehow, and for good reason. I was no exception. Especially because I had an older brother who was a senior and hated the fact that his little brother to the same school that he was going to. I walked down the halls in fear of a senior popping out of nowhere and giving me a wedgie or pushing me into a locker. I had fun my freshman year though. I played football, basketball and baseball and made many new friends that would ultimately end up being my friends until the end of high school. I also learned a lot that year. I learned to respect the upperclassmen and to know your place in the school. Do not try to be someone that you are not because people do not like that. Sophomore year was like the middle child of the high school family. You are out of the spotlight of being new to the school but you are still an underclassman so you still you still do not get treated how you may think that you should. I actually enjoyed my sophomore year very much. I made the varsity football team which allowed me to get to know the older kids in our school who taught me the most of all my other years. I finally would get invited to parties and events that everyone in school would go to. The schoolwork did get harder my sophomore year. I had many more nights of staying up all night trying to put the finishing touches on a term paper or a chemistry project.  But I was getting older and wiser, and I knew the next year would be great.

                Going into my junior year I was so excited. I was an upperclassman now. I felt like I had a spot in the school and no one could take it from me. I knew all of the seniors and I knew the classes below me so my amount of friends increased vastly.  Its funny how high school does that for you. I had a car now so I felt invincible, like I could do anything or go anywhere anytime that I got the urge. My friends and I took overnight trips to San Diego, went to six flags on a random day when we felt like it, and would drive to Westwood to get  L.A.’s best ice cream. I was having the time of my life. But like every year the classes got harder and I was spending a lot of my time making videos or studying for a pre-calculus final that my grade would matter on how well I did. Many nights calling my classmates at ten o’clock at night asking for help on an essay. As my junior year rapidly came to a close I was overwhelmed by so many different feelings and emotions about that fact that I was going to be a senior. Finally the day came. I was now a senior. The highest ranking student, the leader of the school, the big man on campus, I felt like a CEO at a multi-million dollar corporation. Everyone in school knows who the seniors are. In the beginning of the year it was almost surreal the feeling of being a senior. Football was unforgettable in our outstanding run to the semi-finals of the CIF-Southern Section Championship. Some of those games will replay over and over for the rest of my life. The classes are fun to go to and the teachers are much more laid-back when you are a senior. It is like once you get to that fourth year there is a big bag of freedom that is given to you. It is great. There were so many nights this year that I thought that I had never laughed harder or saw a fight that I would never forget. The rallies during homecoming were so much fun; just listening to each class scream their class numbers so loud that you couldn’t even hear yourself think. It was by far the greatest year if my life. But it was also one of the most stressful in our preparation for college. All of the applications and trips to see different schools is very stressful and at times tedious.  But looking back it was all worth it.

                As my senior year comes to a close, I look back at my high school experience and cannot help but to laugh. There were so many great times and so many memories that will last in my mind until I die. I thank everyone that I have met along the way because each person has taught me something new about myself and life, and without them I would not be the person that I am today. With all the great summers at the beach, all of the assemblies and Lunch Time Activities, all of detentions, it is amazing to think that it will soon be over and we will be released into the real world. We cannot say, “I can’t wait until next year” because for us there is not a next year. This is the end of our adolescence and now we must become young, responsible adults. Through the good times and the bad, I can say with complete honesty that El Segundo made me into the man I am today and I will never forget the qualities that were instilled in me at this amazing institution.