High school ...The lessons I learned are endless--so endless I feel as if 500 words does not come anywhere close to the length I need to explain what I learned. High school is a learning experience, from events in the classroom involving books and studies as well as events outside the classroom. That statement leads me to my first two lessons I learned while attending Lee-Davis High School. I learned that grades and GPA, while they are important, are just numbers and they don’t define who you are, how smart you are or your work ethic. So many of my friends/classmates/family in IB believed that GPA is all that matters, that if you receive a bad grade it’s the end of the world. In the beginning I felt the same way, it just began to get to stressful and I didn’t want to be diagnosed with high blood pressure at a young age. I realized the importance in trying your best and striving for greatness, but that sometimes it is okay to make a mistake, get a bad grade or also choose sleep over studying. We're all young adolescents learning together as a group, and sometimes you need those bad grades or that sleep or failure to drive you to the next goal. It may seem crazy, but I promise you until you try it you will never know. Even though I may not be the ideal IB student and will not go down in the history of IB for the student with the highest class rank or best grades or even best attendance, but a student that will, Alec Dalton, taught me that he would choose sleep over studying due to his ability to perform better with more sleep. If you want to trust anyone trust him, because the things he has done in his four years are incredible!
The other lesson I touched briefly on was the idea that learning is a constant thing. I learned that it is super important to intake information, lessons and experiences while in the outside world, not just the classroom. While the classroom does give you a base of how to learn and how to be able to study, the outside world and lessons you go through with friends and family are the lessons that stick with you forever. It’s like I learned in English, everything has a theme. Every incident you go through has a learning experience with value that ends up sculpting you more into the person you are supposed to be. Even though I may have known this lesson before high school, it didn’t really register with me until my senior year. I went through a lot of experiences that made me question friendships, relationships, religion and so forth, but then I realized everything has a purpose and even though I may not understand God’s plan at that moment I was put in those situations to take something positive out of it and keep progressing in life. Even though I believe you never really stop learning or growing as a person, I believe that high school is where I found out a lot about myself due to certain situations and how I reacted. It’s like my high school English teacher once told me, "it is all about the reaction."
I learned that bull shitting can go a long way. I have a knack for it. I can take any idea, subject or belief and argue it, even if I don’t believe it. I can’t tell you the amount of projects I went up in front of the class with and just went off the top of my head and faked my way through. I shocked a lot of teachers while doing it. Of course there were times where it would not go as I would have liked or expected, but like I said from my first lesson learned, it is all about the experience. I also learned if I am going down for anything in the history books it will be the best bullshitter that Lee-Davis High School has ever seen. It took me a while to grow these skills-- they don’t just happen overnight. When I was a freshmen I could never have gone up in front of the class and given a project, I was way too intimidated but then I became confident about who I am and what I could do and realized if you can convince yourself to believe it, then everyone in the room will follow behind you. That’s the key to bullshitting--make sure you are persuading yourself and believing what you’re saying because then the whole class will be behind you. I also learned recently that if I would have taken my school work as seriously as I take my music, I probably could have taken Evan Hargreaves spot for valedictorian. Hahah. Only reason I say that is because I see how much effort and sleepless nights I put into my music to perfect it and it is something I love to do. If it is not perfect then it is not done. I wish I could have said that for my school work.
Another lesson that I learned that I hope whoever reads this learns is that don’t mind what other people say, think or believe. Be who YOU are. Man I have seen some crazy things during my high school career. I mean I started making music as a junior and I had a lot of people in my school, whether it be students or teachers hating it, but with the practice and determination and like the lesson I first talked about in paragraph one, I powered through it. A year later I have gained so much respect for being myself and have gained so many students and teachers support as my craft has been getting better. Me powering through what people said and what people thought and believed, that my music would never be anything, has put me where I am at now at the end of my senior year. I have so many people loving my music now due to me perfecting my craft; I have gained the support of students, teachers, custodians, even Coach Stevens and that’s saying something. The reason I put this in my writing is to show that the first lesson is so important, but also that if you do not let people’s words and beliefs stand in your way, you can accomplish anything. Picture this: there are two miners both chipping at a wall to get to the gold. One miner has been chipping for weeks, maybe even months, but kept listening to some of his coworkers keep telling him there is nothing there , that it’s a waste of time. The other miner just kept chipping. As the one miner is walking away the other one chips through the wall to the gold. You never know how close you really are to obtaining your dreams, so don’t let the influence of people in society stop you from being happy, because the truth is at the end of the day, you will not know 95 percent of the people you went to high school with after your last day of senior year. I mean I don’t care how wild your true self is-- express it. You want to make music for a living but everyone doubts you because it doesn’t start off too hot or it's not a realistic career? Well keep pushing through. Practice makes perfect and those musicians out there are regular people just like you and I. I mean I went to school with a girl that was trying to make porn videos and posting them on the internet. Even though it's bizarre and I would crack jokes along with the whole school and didn’t agree with her decisions, I respected her for doing what made her happy and not listening to everyone’s opinions and words. She stayed true to herself and for that you have to respect her.
In my high school experience, I learned a lot about what true friendship is. I have had three loyal best friends from middle school all the way up to my senior year and probably past my senior year. I would do anything for them as I know they would do the same for me. That doesn’t mean in my four years of high school that I didn’t gain a bunch of new friends that I now see as life long friends. For one, I gained 5 new best friends along with the other 3 that allowed me to broaden my horizons. They make me see things a bit different. They allow me to see the other side. This really helped build me into the person I am and allowed me to grow because I realize there are so many different personalities out there with beautiful visions--sometimes you have to be open to them when you stumble on it. I also learned that the “popular crowd” is not so much the popular crowd. The things that the media and movies portray to us is all bogus. I went into high school thinking that’s what it would be like and for a while I hung out with the popular crowd every weekend. I drank with them every single weekend. Until one day I realized that the popular crowd really does see themselves as the popular crowd. They look at themselves as if they are above people. They put up 5 Instagram photos daily of them having a good time with blurred out cups and cans. They think it’s a privilege to hang out with them and that you need to make a reservation to be with them. I thought the same thing for a whole school year until I took five steps back and watched from a distance. The popular kids that think everyone wants to hang out with them don't realize that it is all in their minds. Everyone from the outside hates them. No one wants to be around them. So don’t think it's so special from their side. The reason all of their Instagram photos are with the same people every weekend is because no one else ever wants to be around them. It is crazy how it works, but you will never see how it works until you’ve seen both views. Those popular kids won’t go too far in life. Me distancing myself from them allowed me to gain a whole new set of friends that I now consider family, which is my IB family. Yeah we may argue, we might want to kill each other, but don’t get it twisted-- they’re like my brother sand sisters. That means I can mess with them and pick on them, but you can’t. I made that clear when one of those “popular kids” kept messing with the famous Alec Dalton that I mentioned earlier and I finally stood up for him because IB made us a family that no one will ever understand. So that’s another brief lesson-- IB was the greatest decision I have made.
The teachers in IB are very helpful and understanding. Even though the title IB may be a scary thing, honestly anyone can do it. It is not about how smart and intelligent you are, it is about the effort, determination and work you put in. I promise you me coming into freshmen year I was pissed doing IB. I was pissed my mom signed me up for it, but on my last day of high school, it was an experience that made me who I am. Yeah those essays sucked, those long nights sucked, those final exams sucked, but they made me into who I am. They made all of us who we are. We are more prepared for the real world. I know high school is all about working your tail off for four years to get you into your dream school and finally be free from your parents, but IB taught us as a collective that when the going gets tough, chase after it. It taught us how to power through, it taught us that we as people can achieve anything we set our minds to and that you don’t get these lessons in many other places. So at this time I would like to thank the teachers that helped me get through this journey and believed in me, like Mrs. Gerheart, Mrs. Berlinghoff, Mrs. Robbins, Mr. Salvato, Mrs. Griffey and even Mrs. Drake who honestly taught me a lot my freshman year and made me realize teachers don’t put up with bullshit. I love all of y'all and thank you for believing in me and pushing me to be the best I could be. To anyone reading this, if they are still teaching at LD, if you don’t already know them get to know them because they are the type of teachers that really make a difference and can impact a life. Their rooms aren’t just classrooms, they’re homes and they are always inviting of new people into their homes.
There are 1365 days in a high school career; it's crazy because in those days I learned so much and even though all of us as a student body are so close due to four walls of a school, everyone’s stories and lessons are so different. I watched as a single man could bring back the colors orange, white and blue back to life. Let’s be honest, Mrs. Moore was awful, she drained the life out of the school. I watched as a single man brought an entire school together, students and faculty, and made us one, "where tradition and pride run deep." I hated being known as a confederate my first two years but since the change, I am proud to be a C-Fed! Principal Stevens has done great things for this school and I only imagine more great things to come. I had a close relationship with teachers which helped me get through classes because let's be honest, my grades weren’t the best and I barley showed up to class. I learned that contrary to belief, partying isn’t all that it's cracked up to be. I know "Project X" and other movies make it seem so fun and so amazing, but honestly it isn’t that great. A lot of bad things can happen during the time you are intoxicated. I watched as one of my best friends overdosed and I had to call the paramedics because he had way too much. The thing is, you never find your limit until you exceed it and sometimes then, you either don’t find it or you are too late. I had another great friend pass away due to intoxicated driving (please anyone reading this never do it). I have known him and his family since I was six, maybe seven-years-old. I have never stepped on a football field without him being by my side. The amount of times we locked hands together before walking down to the field and the amount of laughs we shared were endless. If you messed with him on the field, then I was jumping in and vise versa. He was a brother to me--a bond that can’t be broken and even though he is gone now, I know he is watching from above. He didn’t make it through all 1365 days, but the ones he did make it through, he lived it up. His life was cut short when he was riding with someone that was drunk. I didn’t know that a few days before the accident would be the last time I shook hands with him or spoke with him. Just goes to show how quick things can change, sometimes for the worst and sometimes for the better, but 28 will always have a spot in my heart. High school is filled with numbers, like 1365, 28, 4.0’s, even 1.5’s and 5 day weeks and 9 weeks and 4 semesters or 4 snow days or 3 day weekends or 100’s and 0’s. But for a moment, forget about the numbers and cherish the memories because you only get to live these 1365 days once. Thank you to everyone who has taught me in these past four years--you have made a difference and I will always remember you. I love all of you and I will always be a Confederate.
