Isabel Glueckert

Professor Hughes

English 1101

September 10th 2021

New Kid in Class

I always dreamed about being the new kid, how wonderful that would be right?

Starting out with a fresh and brand-new start, away from all of the rumors and

embarrassing memories from your peers. I never thought moving would be a reality for

me, and oh, it scared me to death. I had always fantasized about it, but never thought it

would become reality. The possibilities were endless of where we could go, my mother

would call me into the living room and say, “Look at this cool house I found!” in

whatever location she was interested in that night. If I remember correctly the farthest

house she found was in Virginia. To preface, the farthest away I had ever moved was

maybe five minutes away from our previous residence; not to mention, I had gone to

school with the same kids since I was in kindergarten. I was worried I would never see

my friends again, or our friendship would fade away. I knew I wasn’t going to know

anyone in my new school. I was terrified I was going to be so utterly alone. Sitting in a

room with people who all know each other, talking and joking around, and you just sit

there… quiet. Going into Junior year, not knowing anyone is terrifying, and in the middle

of COVID? How was I expected to survive?

Finally, the first day of school arrived, to start off the year my mother had decided

it best for us to be online to lower our chances of catching coronavirus. To everyone's

surprise, online learning sucked. It was so awful; my mom finally overcame her fear of us

contracting COVID and allowed us to go to school at the start of the second quarter. It is

important to note that the online courses I was taking, did not line up with the courses

taken in the actual school, even though it was the school’s online program. I was

excluded from some of my most desired classes; like art, and American Sign Language

since these courses were taught all year long and I had already missed an entire quarter. I

ended up taking some classes that I did want which was fine by me.

In my new school, I didn’t know where I was going, who people were, and so

much more. It was not easy to say the least. The school was a maze to me and with

arrows directing the traffic to encourage social distancing, certainly didn’t help. I do

believe that it took me almost a full month to figure out how to get where I needed to go,

and the quickest ways to get there. The hours were pretty off too, we would go half days,

half of our schedule one day and the remaining half the next, split up evenly of course.

The half days also certainly didn’t help with attempting to make new friends as I only

knew approximately half of the other students in my classes. Don’t even get me started

on how difficult the masks made it. I would meet a person one day; they’d change their

mask and I’d practically already forget who they were by the next. Some students were

very friendly though, they’d walk up to me and say something along the lines of “Hi my

name is so-and-so, where are you from?” This really helped with my transition; granted,

it took me a while to recognize people’s eyes. After that first interaction though, no one

really said much else to me after that first meeting. I had two friends at school: a

rebellious senior in my gym class, and another completely out-there, literal comedian in

my English class. As I kept going, the more depressed I got.

 I was so utterly alone, I had two friends, who were absolutely amazing, but who

were in only one of my classes each. I never saw them after school, once the day was

done and I walked in my front door, and I was alone again. I tried reaching out to my

friends from my old school several times to see if we could do something together, but

they just ghosted me. Who would have thought moving twenty minutes could isolate you

so much? I had never felt so cold and alone. Sitting in my room all by myself, looking

through my social media seeing what all my old schoolmates and friends were up to.

Finally, I started talking to those sitting around me, and they started actually

attempting to converse with me back. I had more friends! I started hanging out with them

after school and simply getting out of the house more, more so than I ever had been in my

entire life. Eventually certain people liked me so much that they took me to meet their

other friends, one turned into two, two turned into four etc. Through that one comedian

friend, I met the best friend group I think I’ve ever had. We would hang out just about

every night doing who knows what, going who knows where. A couple times we went

late at night to a park in our town, we would sit around and talk on a statue. The

spotlights shining in our eyes, the warm but cool evening breeze. If you walked in front

of the lights, and looked over the cliff, you could see the city below. Little lights shining

in the distance, you could see the lights of cars on the highway. A few times we just

drove around blasting music all singing along, sticking our hands out the window. The

smell of summer nights filling our noses. It was amazing. Pure bliss. I was actually gone

so much almost every night. I was finally happy at my new school, days went by so fast it

was almost a blur and before I knew it, it was time for summer. With how well

everything had gone and how blissful the summer was it also went by in a flash.
 Now, beginning of senior year, I don’t see them quite as often as I would like, but

that’s okay. It's okay because I know that when I need them for anything at all, I can just

fall back on them, and they will be there to catch me. I’m keeping high hopes that the rest

of this year will be the absolute best one I have ever had.