Don't Be Afraid!! by Everette Davis

Like most of you freshmen, I felt scared about starting high school. I was especially afraid of going to a new school, new classes, and most of new high school children’s problems, new friends. I started high school and seemed to be in the corner of the room away from the other children, since most of my classes did not include the friends I had the previous year.

I would sit and sleep in class because I am the type of person who needs people to talk to or I feel very low. I would also not answer questions that the teacher asked the class because I felt if I made a mistake then the others wouldn’t accept me because I was either too smart or too dumb. My grades were slipping because when the teacher would pair us up into partners, I would be the one that was depending on the others for the help because I was too afraid to give my own opinion.

After a couple of months, my teacher saw that I was not being cooperative with the other classmates and I discussed my problems with her. She gave me some advice. She said that I should not be afraid of what others would think of me and to find some people that I had something in common with. She told me that I would be fine. I did just that. I started answering and asking questions in front of the class and nobody said anything about me. The teacher then made a class activity in which she would say a word and if you were interested in it then you would raise your hand. Then she’d call whoever had their hand up and they would say what they would like about that word. For example she would say cartoon and people would raise their hand and she’d call on them and they would give their favorite cartoons. This made finding people with the same interests as you easily. After a few weeks I was making a good number of friends.

Listen, making friends is easy; just take my word for it. I’m a senior and I can’t go down the hallway without seeing any of my friends there. If you are a person that is afraid to make friends, talk to your teachers and see if they can do anything about it. Since that experience, I have made good grades thanks to the help of my new friends, and you can, too. Don’t let the difficulty of making friends bring you down in your new high school environment. Just do your best and try to graduate.