Sophomore year is finally over, and I’m sure there’s going to be an abundant amount of articles like this one probably along the lines of: “My (grade) reflection” or “A reflection of my year” but I’m striving towards a different approach. As uneventful and hard as my sophomore year was, I’d like to focus on the more significant events, and issues that have come up or been brought to my attention during my sophomore year. Most of my year was spent in the back of classrooms keeping to myself, never causing a scene it has been a blessing and a curse but it’s caused me to be more observant than I’ve ever been. So I’m glad to have the opportunity to be able to speak on these events I’ve witnessed.

     These aren’t to be in any order just as they come to me. One of the smaller things I’ve noticed was the lack of unity this school possesses. Now don’t get me wrong I’m not one to want to participate in spirit weeks or big school events, but the staff and the student body have no sense of unity or representation for anything. There’s never any encouragement to get students to be together or to participate in events, and I also feel as if that is part of the fact that teachers don’t listen to students, so we feel shut down. The more resentment we feel,  and not resentment that is always physically shown, the more repressed we students feel, and the more unimportant and small we think we are. That might be the reason there’s so little encouragement to be involved, there’s no one the students can go to share their opinion about without there being rules and regulations or other opinions that follow. There’s so much room for representations of cultures, sexualities, activities, and more but no one puts forth the effort to make such a thing happen.

     This brings me to my next point, throughout the months I spent here so many students have begged for help and guidance from teachers, teachers these students put trust into. Many of these students, were victimized by their peers whether it be verbal, physical, sexual, etc. And many have gone to administrators about those issues and were not served justice or any reassurance, but a contract. Something that is not forced or helpful, only infuriating. Many students failed to be heard by teachers/administrators that were supposed to protect them, so many vital issues, were swept under the rug to be kept away. They wonder why walk-outs started and why students grew ornery with the system we have to put up with, a system that seems impossible to fix not only for us but for generations ahead. We wanted a change and we could not be successful because nobody could be there to guide us. I was told about the group of 600 students who did a successful walkout in 2016, it was extremely inspiring, but when we tried to create change in a similar way we were told we did it wrong and that it could have worked if we did it the right way. If we only had someone to teach us how to make a change and it actually is impactful, it would improve the quality of this high school by so much.

     A final topic to speak about would be the adjustment back to in-person school. I entered in-person learning as a sophomore, so I practically didn’t have a real freshman year, I didn’t know where anything in the school was, who any of the teachers were, or how anything worked really. It was also odd to see so many people I went to elementary school, or middle school with that had changed so much or not at all.  Many people were not who they were when I knew them last and it was something weird to experience. To add on, wearing a face mask seemed to be a huge controversy with many people this year, I never understood how so many people could be so resistant to a small face covering. Let alone make others feel bad for wearing one? It was a weird concept to watch unfold. I never had an issue with wearing my mask because I had my own reasons to want to wear one, and eventually, when the mandate got lifted I kept wearing mine because I got a job where it was more beneficial for me to wear my mask in a public setting.

     To conclude my short but impactful list of events, it was eventful, to say the least. I had only experienced so much in such a short amount of time that it really made me view things differently in the end. I hope to help contribute to making a change in the upcoming years. This year taught me things I wish I had known earlier and things I wish I didn’t really need to know.