“Oh no, the last person I want to be partnered with,” I said to myself. Beginning of 7th grade there was a new kid, we will call him Jake. He looked like a normal kid who was shy and wanted to fit in. I think he tried a little too hard to fit in because he was being cocky and annoying and saying some weird things. Besides that, nobody in our grade knew him before he came to our school, so he was pretty much a loner. He didn't talk to anyone unless he needed to, not even the other new kids who came to our school that year. 

One day, he decided to sit at our lunch table. I remember clearly that it was a Friday and it was pizza for lunch that day. Jake was quiet at first but then started to pitch into our conversations about sports. He started to flex and show off how good he is at his sport and how he could beat anyone in the school. We weren't fond of his cockiness and from there on nobody wanted to talk to him even though we didn't know him that well. Particularly, I was annoyed with him and thought I would never be friends with him. A couple of days later he kept sitting at our table making jokes. Occasionally, he would make the table laugh even if it was the dumbest joke ever. It was because of the way he said the joke that made it funny. Throughout the whole week, I realized that he wasn't that bad just pretty cocky. 

I shared science class with Jake that year. We had a massive science project coming up that was worth almost 50% of our grade, and it was close to the end of the year. It was a partner project and the teacher assigned the partners. I didn’t want Jake as a partner because he was annoying and would likely goof around while I did most of the work. When our teacher announced the partners, guess who I was partnered with? I thought, “Why me?” The project involved a lot of drawing, writing, and collaboration, so we had to share the work. 

At first, he was very annoying and acted like he was tired to get out of work for that class. I had to do all the work that first day and barely got anything done because he didn’t help much. The day after he said to me, “I’m good today, sorry about yesterday”. That meant a lot to me because I was annoyed and I thought he was lying about being tired. It showed character and how he wasn’t as cocky as I thought he was, making it so that he might be someone I could be friends with. In that second class, Jake and I got a ton of work done and worked well together. We kept the same speed of working for the rest of the classes and got our project done the day before we were supposed to. That project changed me in a way, whenever in a new situation I never try too hard to fit in, instead, I behave like I normally would, and people like me for it.