Personal Narrative: Looking Back In High School

Looking back, high school wasn’t really all that bad. In fact, the experiences that I went through, whether good or bad, has shaped who I am at this moment. I remember back in freshman year when I thought that high school was going to be the worst four years of my life. As a young middle schooler, I had been warned by various movies such as Mean Girls about the high school life and treated it like a documentary. At that time, I had this idea that everyone in high school was rude, evil, and out to get me. I was more paranoid than your average president. I was so quiet that no one could possibly have noticed me enough to even hate me. This type of paranoid and close-minded attitude really affected the way I interacted with my peers and I ended up limiting myself to …show more content…
I had almost accepted this supposed fact until one day, I decided to try something new and prove myself wrong. I waved and said hello to a new classmate, uneasy but determined. I stumbled with my words, unintentionally sounding like an interrogator, as I didn’t know how to properly lead a conversation like a normal human being. I soon ran out of things to say and the rumored plague of silence occupied the space between us. I came out of my little experience feeling somewhat disappointed and even defeated, but then I realized that nothing tremendously bad had happened. I wasn’t suspended, put in detention, or paraded through the halls while getting booed at and thrown at with tomatoes for being socially awkward. Nobody really cared that I was a little awkward, it was all in my head. In fact, now that I had committed this social crime and survived, my level of fear towards the interaction diminished. Little by little, I changed my attitude and looked at everyday social interactions as opportunities to improve and sharpen my social skills. Now I am happy to say that whenever I see a familiar face or a distant acquaintance, I always try to be the first to make eye contact, smile, and strike a