My High School Years

When I applied to Old Colony in 8th grade I was attracted to the idea of learning a trade while doing academic courses. Although I will admit that the prospect of co-op and earning money while in school was pretty tempting. There was also that idea of starting fresh, a blank slate. I was going to make the most of high school, by doing everything, sports, theater, you name it, I wanted to do it. My experiences in high school would change the way I choose to live, it would also be the place where I learned some of the most important life lessons, lessons I will take with me throughout my life.

 I was so excited when entering those doors on the first day on orientation day, we all crammed in the gymnasium but I couldn’t have been happier. This was it, the start of my high school years.  Academically I had high expectations for myself, higher expectations from my parents. Which was warranted, my grades in middle school were exceptional, and I was generally pretty smart academically. I’ll admit, I had a tendency to procrastinate, but I could afford to back then. This made me complacent, lazy. This unfortunately carried over into high school, despite this I still held those high expectations of myself and I succeeded for the most part, I was recognized for academic achievement several times throughout high school. In hindsight I could’ve done better, tried harder, studied more, the important thing though is that I’ve learned from my mistakes, and I’ll take these lessons into college, my career, and the rest of my life.

When it came to my shop, I always wanted to be in computer science because at the time it matched my career goals and I personally found it really interesting. Although it no longer matches my career goals I still appreciate the shop and the programming we do here. I liked how we continued to do new things in this shop, continued to experiment, my favorite language was probably JavaFX which we did in senior year. That was a lot of building UIs but it was really intriguing because there were many facets to it, we had to build the UI then connect the UI to the code and we also worked with SQL databases. Although we did not have co-op I think I made the right choice of shop, much of what we are learning is still relevant and could be useful later.  Throughout my tenure, this shop has taught me many things, it especially taught me how to not overthink things. I used to make things infinitely more complicated than they needed to be and this hindered me from a work standpoint, I would take forever to finish even the simplest of tasks because I was missing the smallest little mistake. Eventually I learned to not overthink, to make things more simple, and it has helped me so much, not only in shop but life in general. 

Despite a lot happening to me during my high school years, I think I made the most of it.  I am especially proud of the Engineering Club, which I created in my Junior year after myself and a few of my friends entered and won a seat in the 2024-2025 NASA TechRise Competition. Although I am extremely proud of the club I created, my favorite experience in high school was definitely the Theater Club. When I started high school, I never thought of acting, but after seeing one of my friend’s shows I decided to give it a try and I fell in love with it. Since Freshman year I have starred in Much Ado About Nothing as Claudio and I am currently going for a role in this year’s musical Chicago. While I did not participate in sports for more than two years, I would be remiss to not include them as some of my most influential experiences here at Old Colony, I played football for one and a half years (I left because I tore my ACL in Sophomore year and never got back in) and it was an incredible learning experience, it was fun too, it taught me a lot about mentality and work ethic, always putting everything into what you are committed to.

Overall my time at Old Colony has been one of the most incredible experiences I have ever had, it taught me so much, not just academically or vocationally, but about life. I figured out a lot here, what I want to do, how I want to be seen, how I want to live my life, and most importantly who I want to be. When I leave it will definitely be a bittersweet moment, I made many memories here, some sad, most happy. However I think the biggest lesson Old Colony will teach me is how to move on with my life, keep what I got from here, the memories, the lessons, the friendships, but remember to move forward with life, so I can be the person I want to be.