About Face: Different Decision
Generally speaking, the first important decision teenagers are required to make is deciding upon a college, for me however, choosing a high school was just as if not more difficult. In under to understand my predicament at the time, it’s imperative that some background information be given.
I have lived my entire life in Orange County, New York, a large part of the Hudson Valley, which given my opinion, is nicer than any borough with the exception of Manhattan, but that’s beside the point. At the age of six, I entered a small Catholic school in a small town located on a big river, the Hudson. I stayed in the school from Kindergarten through Eighth Grade and with few exceptions, graduated with many of the same kids I entered the school with nine years before. During those years, for the most part, I stuck with the decisions of my friends, because in many regards my class was a large group that in many instances acted together; however once the time came for looking to school after the eighth grade, things changed rather quickly.
As all of the other kids in my class weighed one of two options: a) their local school district’s Public School or b) a mediocre Private School a few towns away, I sought after something else. As it turned out, most chose the latter option, which isn’t a surprise considering the path between the two schools had been paved by past graduates, yet the school hadn’t interested me at all, so the possibility never entered my mind. Instead, I set my sights on a school which was not only located in a different state, New Jersey, but was relatively unheard of by any of my classmates and never attended before by anyone from my elementary school.
The funny thing in all of this, was that I was the person least expected to stray so far from the rest of the class, certainly there were moments when I separated myself from the others, but when attending nine years of school with many of the same kids, choosing something different isn’t as easy as one might think it would be.
The end of that year, I began high school not knowing a single person that would be graduating with me four years later, not knowing a thing about the town it was in or the state for that matter, and taking a train full of New York City commuters to school each day, plus I had to wake up at 5:30. Yet, it was something entirely different than what I had been used to and I ended up enjoying it immensely.
Now reflecting on my choice four years later, I am absolutely positive that I made the right decision in going against everything that I had normally would have done and doing something that nobody else in my class had even considered. I made new friends, gained new opportunities, had a totally different high school experience than anyone else I graduated 8th grade with, and most importantly, loved the school. And none of this would have been possible if I hadn’t decided to be different than the rest.
