Wow. That's the first word that comes to mind when I think of my education and life so far. Here I am at Maine South, confidently walking the hallway alongside seniors that have beards like Abraham Lincoln, Juniors with blue or purple or orange hair, sophomores who are still kind of unsure of themselves but act real tough, and of course, my fellow freshies and I who I've known since since we were half our current height and with voices that were so high we could've been in the girls chorus. I've made some new friends too. My science partner is a real character, his favorite color is periwinkle, which looks something like this:
I also sit next to a kid at lunch who's 12 years old and a Canadian exchange student. He's very loud, and a bit obnoxious. He's always complaining about how nobody he knows ever says "ay." I've come a long way since elementary school, and it's all because of Lincoln. I'm here typing on my Chromebook, (and you all know that I know all the commands, loopholes and shortcuts) typing on WEEBLY. I actually forgot it was called weebly. Weebly's changed a bit. There's all the elements on a sidebar instead of a white complex toolbar at the top, which bothers me but is probably a whole lot simpler for everybody. I sit next to Jackie in study hall, and she's always talking about how much she misses our LA class. She always asks about Franklin and Nick and Ned, and I have to tell her that Ned is at a different school now, and Franklin isn't in any of my classes, and that Nick doesn't miss her one bit. That's one difference in High School, you actually have to make an effort to keep in touch with people. Jackie likes to complain about how hard her English 2 class is, and how it isn't nearly as fun as ours was. I'm in regular English now, and we're learning about the elements of fiction. I scored an B+ on the pretest our teacher gave us on all of the things we were going to learn this semester. I have no worries about that class, and I don't miss all of the homework and plies upon piles of long-term assignments I had to deal with at Lincoln. But I do miss just about everything else. The wonderful books we got to read that I adored even when my fellow classmates despised, and Fridays we would spend in the library or outside that slowly deteriorated throughout the year. I especially miss just the overall atmosphere of the class. I would walk in and I knew that in this class I could just be me. We were a big family of misfits, and talk of unplugging dryers would shift to one of the girls' most recent boyfriends in moments.There would be singing and yelling and paper airplanes and somehow we would learn something in the middle of it all. It was great. And now my brother gets to go through all of it in my wake. I hear you're giving him a hard time on those homework assignments. Keep up the good work. With any luck, he'll be better than I was. Ah yes, I remember my problems just as well as my triumphs at Lincoln. Whenever I look at my High School planner and see a blank page, I immediately think of Mr. Nasshan and can almost feel him slapping the back of my head. That was another great class. While some students *cough Jackie cough cough* "Hated him with a burning passion," I knew that it was only because when a student said something absolutely dumb like confusing The Dalai Lama with a female actress, he would, to put it lightly, point it out to the student immediately. I remember when in 6th grade Mr. Francis put me in study hall and I first met Mr. Nasshan, I absolutely despised him. The next week in social studies class we for some reason were to write an anonymous paper talking about a person without using their name, and you bet I wrote all about Mr. Nasshan and how terrible he was. Now I think I can say that he's probably my favorite teacher I've had so far. Whenever I talked to him, he would put me in my place and I'd remember all of the things I was behind in or needed to improve on, but strangely at the same time he would bestow upon me a sense of confidence that I had what it takes to do so, and that my potential was endless. Mrs. P was a bit similar in how I would feel quite strange after each time she would scold me for not doing my homework or not keeping organized. She'd yell at me, yeah there was plenty of that, but she would treat me as though I had just cut my own arm off. She would make me feel stupid, and she would pity me in such a way that really affected me. And then there was Mr. Miller. I'm having trouble describing him in complete sentences. Amazing. Wonderful. Genius. Funny. Kindhearted. He gave off a vibe that you were important to him, and you were brilliant. He treated everyone as an intellectual equal, and that is saying a lot. As Mr. Nasshan once said, that guy could work for NASA if he wanted to. My biology class no is pretty much just going over exactly what we learned in middle school. Right now we're learning about the unusual properties of water, and we literally have the EXACT SAME SHEET as the one Mrs. May gave us in 6th grade. Here's a picture:
The only difference was that the 6th grade version was pink! You can see my name at the top right, I had to start signing as just Chris so teachers would call me Christopher. Still feels weird though, I like writing out my full name better It was all of you who got me where I am today, and made me who I am today. And who am I today? Well, a 5'10'' geeky freshman who's acing High School, going to 3 LAN parties a month, taking computer programming and engineering, playing guitar, going to comic-cons and all sorts of conferences ever since SIT, (Franklin, Nick and I still wear the shirts), and who's looking forward to the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who this year, driving a car next year, and a long and glorious career in science and technology in the years to come! Thank you all so much for everything you've done and the countless hours you've all put in for my classmates and I, whether it's been writing up a study guide when we shouldn't need one, typing all the notes instead of making us write them all out ourselves, helping us early in the morning or late after school, planning games and activities and field trips to keep school fun, and for just being the greatest teachers ever! I'm so lucky to have had the opportunity to attend a school like this, and I'll never forget this humble little place at the corner of crescent and lincoln avenue.
Darn, I was hoping I could end with a map pointed at lincoln. Not sure how to use that function, it's probably new. Instead I'll just have to leave you with a great inspirational song that just happened to start playing on my internet radio station as I finished typing this. Feel free to scroll through all the other posts on this site while you listen.