High school can be hard, especially if you don’t have a good group of friends to help get you through it. My journey through high school has been a little bit extraordinary. I switched high schools after 9th grade. I went from a large, public, co-ed school to a small, private, all-girls school. Socially, this was a drastic change for me. Luckily, however, I was able to find a great group of friends. They helped me adjust to the changes that switching schools presented.
My new school has no real social structure or hierarchy. Of course there are different friend groups, but I like to think that we are all friendly with one another. Within a grade, there are about four to five different friend groups, but a lot of girls cross over into other groups. When I entered the school in 10th grade, of course nearly all of the girls had found their own group, so I was a fish out of water. Fortunately, I found a group of girls who helped get me acclimated to my new school, and they became my best friends.
My friend group—or “tribe,” as some may say—is a little bit, well, peculiar. For one, we call ourselves “inchies,” because one day for the school talent show, in which we were the only act, we slid across the stage in sleeping bags like caterpillars. That gives you an idea of the comfort we have around each other. We are not afraid to make fun of ourselves in front of each other, or even in front of our entire school. It took a while for me to get used to this, because at my old school I was deathly afraid of making a fool out of myself.
My new high school friends coached me along and showed me how making a fool out of myself could actually be a lot of fun. My new friends helped me boost my self confidence.
I don’t know how I will find a group of girls like them at college next year. I know that they will be lifelong friends, and I am extremely lucky to have them in my life.
