Growing up I never realized how small my school actually was. It wasn’t until recently that I realized having a graduating class of 52 is not the usual number for a graduating class. Starting college you get asked numerous times where you are from and all about your high school. When people started saying they were from a small school with 150 kids in their graduating class, I started to realize my school was minuscule compared to others.

As a child, I didn’t have an inclination that most schools had separate elementary, middle and high schools. I just thought they were all one building, like mine. I also had no idea that there were kids out there that didn’t go to same school together their whole lives.

I graduated with the same exact kids that I attended kindergarten with. We all had the same goofy memories of elementary school moments, most of us were even in the same exact classes together from kindergarten up to fourth grade!

We knew each other, inside and out. We knew what to say and what to keep to ourselves in front of one another. We knew each other when we were all going through the “awkward teen” phase, when the girls put on way too much make-up and the boys put on way too much cologne. Everybody knew everybody’s story, so you never had to worry about explaining your crazy family. We were built in friends, no one meant for it to happen but when you see the same 50 faces every day for 13 years, it just kind of happens.

Although many people consider small schools to be mediocre, I think going to a small school was one of the most beneficial things to ever happen to my academic career. Because there were so few of us we all had chances to build relationships with teachers. No one was ever just a forgotten face. Not only could we build those special bonds with our teachers, they knew who we were before we even stepped foot in their classroom because they knew our entire family history! They either had our siblings or even parents as students, and they knew our grandparents!

The bonds that we built with our teachers were permanent. They lasted all throughout middle school, high school and even college! Many times I have looked back and wondered how I would’ve ever gotten through my high school career without certain teachers. The bond we had went beyond a classroom bond. Many of us trusted our teachers to be our counselors. I’m sure that’s not what they signed up for but that’s what they got! We went to them when we needed to talk about friendship problems, relationship problems or when we were just about to lose our minds. Just like everyone else they knew when we were having a bad day and just needed a little reminder that things would be okay!

Next time you bash a small school, claiming they are uneducated or “too small to event count”, remember this article. We have permanent friendships that we didn’t even have to work to get because of our school! We have bonds with teachers that we didn’t have to try too awful hard to make either because of our size. We aren’t uneducated and we do count, all 52 of us.