Riley M.                                    Riley’s Personal Narrative

Have you ever had one day change your life? One simple day; one small orbit out of 365. Some people would answer this question with the day they met their significant other, while some may describe the day they started their dream job. Some of us have many life-changing days that they can recall, while some of us haven’t even had one yet. One day that changed my life was the day I started seventh grade.

 

It was a pretty ordinary day; except for the fact that it was the end of middle school and the start of junior high. Some people may say: “I remember my first day of junior high. It wasn’t anything special.” Well, I’m guessing those people didn’t go to East Bridgewater Junior-Senior High School. EBJSHS’s size towers over the measly middle school down the street. Going from a school where your grade is the oldest and rules over the younger kids, to a school where there are five whole grades older than you; well, that’s when fear starts to set in.

 

My sister and I were driven to school by my friend and her mother, in fear of getting on a bus with a bus driver who had no idea who you were or where you lived. Arriving at the school a few minutes early, we waited in the cafeteria. My sister instructed my friend and I to travel directly to our designated homerooms. At the school open house the night before, I made sure to find out exactly where this was, because I, a wary twelve-year-old girl, was terrified of the upperclassmen, regardless of what my sister assured me: “You won’t even see them!”; “You’ll be fine!”; etc.

 

I walked into Mrs. Molander’s classroom, room number 214 in the seventh-grade hallway. Luckily, the student who came before me in the alphabet was a friend of mine: Delaney Lyons. This meant that my locker was next to her, as well as my homeroom seat. Because it was our first day in the school, the normal homeroom time was extended so they could give us the low-down on rules and expectations for the year. In this time, Delaney and I chatted about our concerns for the year.

 

Delaney went first. “I’m scared I will walk into the wrong classroom.”

 

“You could always try to play it off. Walk in, say ‘Psych!’ and run out as fast as you can!”

 

“That could work!,” she said laughing. “What are you most afraid of?”

 

I thought for a moment. This day had been on my mind throughout the entire summer, but I couldn’t recall just why I was so worried.

 

“Um, I guess a little bit of everything: getting lost, new teachers, the harder work…”

 

A bell’s ring echoed through the school, we hadn’t had in the middle school.

 

Mrs. Mo, as she had liked to be called, led us down the hallway before stopping at a section of lockers that were suspiciously far from our homeroom. Before this, we had watched a thirty-second long video on how to open combination locks. Unfortunately, the information had not rested well in my brain; “Do I turn it this way? Or is it that way? What are the numbers again?”. My head was spinning in a combination lock-caused whirlwind. And to make it worse, the students around me had seemingly mastered the task; opening them again and again. I got it once, and then again to be safe. I only hoped it would be that easy for all of the locker-stops to come.

 

Then, came the first class: Pre-Algebra with Mrs. Cella. I knew this class was going to be a challenging one, seeing as it was the equivalent of skipping seventh-grade math and heading right to eighth. Although, lots of my friends were in this class, which made it easier to face.

 

The classes went by one by one and then came one of the moments I’d been fearing: lunch. Since I had gotten lost finding the cafeteria it seemed it would be a loathsome part of the day. Walking into the immense cafeteria, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Eighth-graders glaring at the seventh-graders from the other side; their eyes seemed to say, “You don’t belong here.” The lunch line was brimming with kids, making me grateful I had decided to bring a lunch from home. Then, I spotted one of my best friends, Anna Carey, on the other side of the cafeteria. Feeling a bit more confident, I walked toward the table. More and more faces came into view, and soon I discovered the table was filled with friendly faces. Taking it all in, I thought to myself, “Maybe this won’t be that bad...maybe it’ll be a great year!” Looking at it now, I see I was right. In the year seventh-grade, I made new connections with old friends I had lost contact with, due to being in different classes. But with the rotating schedule, and new people in each class, I found myself with a whole new friend group, expanding over every “social circle”.

 

After lunch was three more classes, but I found myself not completely hating them. After all, on the first day of school, every class consists of just a PowerPoint presentation about the class and its teacher, and maybe a game to learn everyone’s names.

 

But then, I had to go to my locker at the end of the day in order to retrieve my backpack. Three hours had passed since I had figured it out, and now the numbers were swirling in my head again. I tried it once with minimal hand-shaking. Turn, click, turn, click, clunk! Uh oh… The locker was jammed and my heart was racing. Delaney, after opening her own locker, asked me what my combination was and my head spinned. “Twenty Sixteen Forty? Twenty two Fourteen Six?” The thoughts swirled in my mind. Finally, the gears turning in my mind came to an abrupt halt.

 

“Twenty-two Forty Sixteen! That’s it!” I exclaimed.

 

My hand gripping the dial, I swiftly turned it to the right, and to the left, and to the right again. With a shaking hand, I lifted the locker door. Click. The locker opened and a breathe of relief escaped my lips. Grabbing my bag, I headed down the stairs to the bus.

 

Looking at it now, in the midst of my second year at EBJSHS, that day doesn’t seem so troubling, seeing as my biggest problems were getting lost and attempting to open my locker. As an eighth-grader, seeing the tiny seventh-graders running through the hallways, pounding on jammed lockers, their enormous backpacks causing them to topple over, I find myself wondering how only a year ago, those meek seventh-graders were my friends and I. So now, it is clear to see that the first day in a new place, and the impressions you make on that day, won’t matter much in the long run.