With the 2014-2015 school year now underway, I have had three weeks to adjust to a novel circumstance–namely, being the only one out of three sisters remaining in Colonia High School. The thought first occurred to me last school year about a week prior to the graduation of my second eldest sister. To no longer have a sure companion accompanying me everyday, as was the routine for three years, seemed odd, though at that point in time it was indeterminate as to how impactful that change would be.
Having taken the opportunity to reflect as this transition evolved from abstraction to reality, I still feel ambivalent about my sister’s departure from CHS. I yearn for our long-winded after-school discussions, in which we expressed both the excitements and vexations of our days–therapeutic, purgative conversations spanning friendship troubles, onerous workloads, AP exams, and sleep deprivation, among other topics of interest. It is only now that I realize how much I cherished seemingly trivial aspects of our former routine together–traditions as basic as walking in and out of school, struggling to wake up in the morning, and enduring interminable, homework-laden nights. We provided each other with advice, morale, laughter, and comradeship.
But I by no means intend to sound selfish. As I bemoan my slightly lonelier existence in my sister’s absence, I can at least take solace in the fact that she is expanding her horizons at college in activities ranging from ballroom dancing to elementary school tutoring to, unsurprisingly, continuing her foray into journalism as a writer for the college newspaper. Moreover, having had two sisters precede me, I have the benefit of their profuse wisdom and experience. I know, for example, the minutiae of the college admissions process–how to navigate through the notorious Common Application, winnow down my list of universities, and decide whom to ask for letters of recommendation.
Such guidance–while most apparent to me during this pivotal stage of senior year–has guided me throughout high school. Questions on what classes I should take and what clubs I should join I invariably forwarded to my sibling predecessors. And while most freshmen disorientedly meandered in search of their classes during the first week of high school, I was luckily endowed with a confident, surefast knowledge of CHS’s geography (“a box on top of a box,” as my sisters so pithily described it).
Although equipped with these advantages, I recognize that many incoming students are neophytes in the adjustment to high school, and what seemed familiar and commonplace to me upon my entrance to CHS three years back is formidable and alien to others. I have assumed the role of a Peer Mentor this year in order to bestow my knowledge and wisdom on freshman novices, in the hopes of easing their acclimation to high school life. So while I adapt to the absence of my siblings for a considerable part of the year, I can at least help others adapt to this new chapter of their lives.
