Memories of a Secondary 4 Student

Four years ago, when I thought about high school it scared me so much. I had many reasons to be scared because high school involved more responsibilities; it would be very different from elementary and majority of my friends were younger than me. I still had my classmates, even though we were only 5, but we weren’t as close as we are now. In my class, there were – and still are – 2 boys and 3 girls (Jordan, Ethan, Harley, my twin sister Sammie, and I). We all have our good and bad qualities. Sammie jokes all the time, but she wouldn’t hurt a fly. Jordan is very sarcastic and smart. Harley speaks without thinking, is overly dramatic and emotional. Ethan tells every story about his life when he shows up at school. Then there’s myself – I have a bad temper.

There’s a lot of pressure when you’re the oldest students of the school, because you’re the class that the younger students are supposed to look up to. This means you must be a good example, keep your grades up, don’t talk back, and act mature. You already have a bunch of responsibilities at the age of 16 – it’s like you’re expected to be an adult. I’m just kidding; it’s not that bad! We’re a bunch of clowns in the secondary 4 class, and we make it an experience to remember. We’re close to our teachers, even though many students aren’t. We joke around all the time with them – they make jokes about us and we make jokes about them, but it’s just us acting like clowns. This one time in English class, our teacher was asking us questions and one of us declared, “a girl was laying in the grass and something came over her, what was it?” Jordan replied, “a cloud”! We all burst out laughing, the jokes and burns just get better as time goes by. Who would have thought that we could be so funny?

Let’s go back 4 more years with my classmates, when we were just small creative kids with BIG imaginations! Back then, we had to line up before we would go to class. Each of us were always frantic to be in front of the line, even though only one of us could. Our solution? To do anything to get the ones in front of us in trouble! We would accuse them of saying something mean or claim that they cut in front of us. Sometimes we would even run to the front of the line without our shoes on our feet! Nobody ever wanted to be caboose. If you were the caboose you “weren’t cool.” Now when we see elementary students doing what we used to do, we just laugh. Imagine how many people used to laugh at us!  We weren’t crazy though, we were simply kids that had to be the first ones in line.

When we were younger we used to cut holes in sticks, glue marbles in the holes and pretend we had powers which depended on the colour of the marble. It was like we were some type of wizard.

We all loved Halloween, so during September to November we would go to the playground almost every night and play a game where we all had to be different Halloween characters like a devil, a wolverine, or a witch. We would play this until it was time to head back home. It was one of the things we looked forward to every year.

Once we got in high school, we didn’t play any of those silly games anymore. However, we replaced those memories with new ones, and maybe even funnier ones!  I guess what I am trying to say is “yes” high-school is different, but it is still a blast and something that everyone should look forward to!

Maggie Gallibois-Driscoll, Sec. IV, Miss. Crystal’s ELA class