A few months after the start of 8th grade, my family moved from Staten Island to Brooklyn. I remember being really scared that I was going to have to transfer schools. I couldn’t think of anything worse. We were only a few months from graduation, and, more importantly, I didn’t want to leave my friends. I had known many of them since kindergarten, and it would kill me to leave them. So, my mom got up early with me every morning and took me to school. That was the last time my friends factored into a decision I had to make about school.
When it came time to think about high school, I was all about where I could go and start over. At this point I had been in school with the same kids for almost eight years. While I appreciated their friendship, I knew that if I was going to grow as a person, then I had to get away from everyone. Looking back on those years, I realize that I didn’t really like myself. I had a bunch of friends, but I didn’t feel like I actually fit in with anyone. The popular girls just used me, and my other friends just saw me as someone to commiserate with. I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. I was definitely relieved when my parents told me that I wasn’t allowed to go to my zoned high school. I had my heart set on going to a performing arts school anyway. I had always loved performing, and I was in a magnet school for performing and wanted to continue with that. Plus, I knew that not many of my friends would want to continue down that path. I knew it was highly competitive, though, so then I decided that I was going to go to Catholic school. That was really my safety net. I’m not a religious person by any means, but I had my reasons. It was an all-girl school, and I had zero luck with boys. It would be a good education, and my older sister had gone there and really excelled. It was the perfect plan. I did know of some other girls who were also applying, but I figured that the school was big enough that we wouldn’t cross paths very often. Initially, I didn’t get into any of the performing arts schools I had auditioned for, and I was heartbroken; but, I had my back-up plan. Right after my parents sent in the check for my uniforms, I was given notice that I had been accepted to one of the schools I had auditioned for. I was not only thrilled that I was going to my initial choice, but I knew that no one else was going to my school.
My high school was incredibly small. The entire student population was the size of my graduating 8th grade class. I knew that such a small school would mean that there was a better likelihood of actually knowing everyone in my grade, but there was something comforting about that sense of community. It also didn’t matter much to me because no one knew me. I could go into high school being the person that I wanted to be, and no one would be around to say anything about who I had previously been. After graduation it was really easy to pull away from everyone. I had already moved away from Staten Island, so now I had to make an effort to see any of my friends from school. While we talked often on AOL Instant Messenger (something teens today don’t really know about), we never really spent any time together. All of the popular girls that I thought were my friends went to see NSYNC (my favorite boy band; the one Justin Timberlake was in before he went solo) without me, and I knew that by September no one would care that I wasn’t around. It turned out that I was right. Once school started, I barely talked to any of my old friends. Although we had made promises to spend time together, we had already moved on and made new friends.
Once high school started, I felt like I was really coming into my own. I found other kids who had the same kind of passion about performing that I did. We were a motley crew of people from all different parts of New York City, so we all had different experiences growing up; but, on the inside we were all similar. We loved to perform. We relished being around other people our age with the same passions, and we were all a little quirky. I don’t want to say “weird” because that’s not what it was. Being in a place that was slightly off of the mainstream made us thrive. There we could be whoever we wanted to be. Even though I had been nervous to strike out on my own, I knew that I made the right decision. To this day, I still know that it was the right path for me.