Dear Hart (and by extension, Journalism),

Honestly, this wasn’t what I expected. Let’s go year by year.

Freshman year: I was thrust into high school with no idea what to do, no idea what I wanted to do, and who I wanted to be. Also, all of my friends found new friends so yea I had to figure that out. Once I did it wasn’t so bad, though.

Sophomore year: Pretty good until COVID ruined everything. I actually enjoyed a lot of my classes that year, had a strong friendship forming with some new people, but then wasn’t allowed to have any of that as it was pulled away from me suddenly by COVID. On the bright side, I did decide what I wanted to do with my life that year. I gained a lot of interests.

Junior year: Honestly I don’t remember a lot of this year. It was almost all online, spent in front of screens that were difficult to focus on when you had an infinite library of entertainment available to you just a few clicks away. So I didn’t learn much.

Senior year: This is the first time I recognized how bad my introvertedness was, and I had to actively fight it. I imagine a lot of this was because of COVID, not being able to have any kind of social interaction with anyone for a year. School helped force me into social situations that let me exercise my social skills. I legitimately enjoyed this year.

All in all, high school was a great experience, I learned a lot, but I’m glad it’s over.