Uncertainty and Growth: An Account of My Relatively Uneventful Sophomore Year of High School
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Seventeen of us were accepted for an Environmental Science Summer Program that offered dual credit and an opportunity to spend the summer camping throughout the American Southwest between my freshman and sophomore years. And though it was one of my fondest high school experiences, much of the excursion is a foggy memory—including many of our campsites. For example, I can’t remember whether or not we spent time in Big Bend National Park, however, there’s no reason we wouldn’t have; especially considering Big Bend is roughly on the way to Guadalupe Mountains National Park, where most of us hiked to the highest point in Texas—a tour I vividly remember. We traveled by van, two white GMCs: a fairly intimate jaunt for seventeen, sixteen-, and fifteen-year-olds of varying backgrounds and cliques.
Our high school was reasonably small, about 475 students in my graduating class. Among the largest classes to date at that school. The school was small enough that most of us knew of each other, although large enough where our impressions of one another were passably confidential—for the most part, I think. During the environmental science trip, much like the Breakfast Club [for that extended Saturday]—lasting a matter of weeks for the seventeen of us—we let one another in, for a little while; and at least one or more rebels, princesses, outcasts, brains, and jocks were present that summer. I vaguely remember being asked by the program leader, Coach Dovzak, to spend time with a different person each day working on an assignment. That might be a false memory though inspired by Remember the Titans.
One of my newest best friends went on the trip. It was nice to have that familiarity among the relatively unfamiliar, having Eric there made me feel more at ease, allowing my inherent confidence to manifest when it otherwise may not have. We toured west Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah (southwestern Colorado possibly too, but I can’t recall). We camped at White Sands National Park, Meteor Crater Natural Landmark, The Grand Canyon National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park (maybe Zion, I can’t remember), and a small handful of state and national forests along the way. On the trip, I started crushing on Lindsay, someone I didn’t know well before that summer despite her running in similar circles as Alex. Lindsay allowed me to gallantly carry her backpack (along with mine, I offered) for most of the eleven-mile hike through Bryce Canyon, which turned into a nine-mile run after an early afternoon deluge, a feat made more impressive considering the heavy rainfall quickly turned the red soil of Bryce Canyon to clay—of course making the hike the most memorable of the entire trip.
Lindsay introduced me to AFI, a hardcore punk band in their early days. I never guessed that underneath her seemingly transparent persona was a punk rocker at heart (I can’t abide that term, I spent much too long looking for a more aesthetically pleasing term for “punk rocker,” but there doesn’t seem to be one as far as I can tell). At the time AFI was signed with Nitro Records. The band had just released their last independent album, The Art of Drowning. At first, I didn’t like them, but Lindsay did so I acquired the taste. Their previous release to The Art of Drowning was Black Sails in the Sunset, an album that to this day I consider one of the greatest albums ever produced, regardless of the genre. AFI signed with DreamWorks before they released their next album, Sing the Sorrow. I bought Sing the Sorrow, and never another AFI album again. Whenever I see the album art for Black Sails in the Sunset, I feel a visceral nostalgia that rarely presents at any other time. I’m not sure why, nevertheless the feeling is powerful and intriguing, and doesn’t include Lindsay. Lindsay and I became friends, but never more than that.
Returning to high school as a sophomore was exciting, especially after our summer excursion. For a few weeks, many of us shared side glances and quiet ‘hellos’ with those who spent the summer environmentally studying, but as those weeks turned tired and our new routines settled those side glances stopped for most of us with little concern. And if there were residual effects of our summer openness that all came to a screeching halt on the morning of September 11, 2001. I was headed to my ACT/SAT Prep class in a trailer near the senior parking lot opposite the cafeteria when I first heard the news from one of my classmates. An announcement was made shortly after class started. Some teachers allowed the students in their classes to watch the footage that morning, but not even one of my teachers allowed the events to interrupt their curriculum that day. I watched footage that evening at home.
It felt like the world changed overnight and hasn’t yet stopped changing. George W. Bush was president, and The Pet Goat was the most infamous book in the world. Most of my generation, Millennials became unabashedly outspoken, and we had Myspace and AOL Chat to release our mounting political frustrations. My brain was still ‘under construction,’ nevertheless, the handful of developed neurons were actively firing. In other news, Harry Potter & The Sorcerer’s Stone and Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring were released in theatres, Apple released the first iPod; "Drops of Jupiter" by Train, "It’s Been Awhile" by Staind, "Hanging by a Moment" by Lifehouse, "If You're Gone" by Matchbox 20, "It Wasn’t Me" by Shaggy, and "Drive" by Incubus were on loudspeakers fucking everywhere; [and] the uncomfortable reality that adulthood was just around the corner was becoming more real.
Alex and I reconnected sophomore year and developed a muted friendship. I was seated in front of her in some class, I can’t remember which; we were seated according to our surnames alphabetized. This fact was likely how we became acquainted with one another years before. A class period or two into the semester she threw something at me or maybe flicked the back of my head—or something—and we started talking. It was a nice preamble to closure. I didn’t see much of her after that year. Moreover, I still felt like I was two different people—as I mentioned in one or more of my previous autobiographical essays—and while I wasn’t yet conscious of that, I wondered, sometimes despairingly, why no one else seemed to recognize that. They knew only the person I shared with them, only the person I disclosed but why couldn’t they see the real authentic me?
I was so obviously me in my head why wasn’t that idea of me also obvious to them? That’s a strange one that I’ve struggled with for much of my life. It’s obvious, of course, but there’s a very real insulator between my idea of me and your idea of me, and I don’t know why or how to rewire that. Whenever I started to feel more confident in asserting myself, something would happen that inspired me to retreat into the comfort of my -self, hiding behind a mask of partial revelation. This pattern prevented me from embracing the discomfort essential for growth and self-discovery, a crucial emotion for maturing and flourishing. Throughout high school, I resisted more with each new semester; refusing to make any choice until the zero option began to resemble the wrong choices. My opposition to choice originated here when I was a sophomore.
My friends and I went to Wendy’s almost every day for lunch. As sophomores, we were allowed to leave campus, a privilege the new administration would take away our junior year. I can’t remember if Mr. Champion was strongly encouraged to resign before sophomore year or during, regardless the longtime beloved principal said his heart-wrenching goodbyes and spent the final years of his life in relative agony. Sam Champion will always have my respect and admiration. Throughout my sophomore year, I thought a lot about junior year. Even though my sophomore year had peaked the summer before. I was still playing basketball but losing interest, and the coaching staff was terrible—unless you were one of two or three players already being groomed for varsity. I wasn’t one of two or three players being groomed for varsity. One of the coaches couldn’t even remember my name and another I argued with mercilessly—I despised that man.
I was working at the Hungry Horse Restaurant busing tables and washing dishes. Before the end of the year, I sat down to speak with the owner, Steve, and told him that although I was grateful for the job, this wasn’t for me. Little did I know at the time that discovering what was for me would take me all over the country and through maintaining a packaging machine during a graveyard shift, writing for a magazine, working in several bookstores, playing host and tour guide on an excursion train, managing the marketing for an art gallery, writing for two newspapers, writing for a journal, managing a health food store, opening my bookstore, babysitting a historic hotel overnight, and establishing and developing a website selling books, photography, and memberships to access writing a publish independently. It would seem that I’ve said those same words quietly to myself for years, “Although I’m grateful for the job, this isn’t for me.”
Soon we would be moving on to that next school year, junior year, finally among the youngest upperclassmen. I was comfortable being at school. I started to realize that I was enjoying being at school. I knew now that schooling wasn’t going to be difficult. I had stopped doing homework and was testing well, so unless my senior year ended up an academic disaster, I would graduate with at least a B+ GPA and be content with that. After all, high school was little more than a mandatory social event. As I look back on that summer and sophomore year, I realize that self-discovery is a winding path, full of detours and false starts; however, it’s those moments of uncertainty and discomfort that we find opportunities for growth and transformation. For me, the summer of environmental science and punk rock, of newfound friendships and lingering doubts, marked the beginning of a lifelong quest to reconcile the disparate parts of myself. Though the journey is ongoing, I understand that the authentic self is not a fixed destination, but a dynamic process of exploration and revelation. And it’s in embracing that uncertainty, rather than retreating from it, that I found the courage to be myself, imperfectly and authentically, one moment at a time.