Entry #002 - High School

Hello, myself from the future.

I graduated from a medium-large sized school (Illinois standards) consisting of around 2000 people. Sadly due to the worldwide pandemic of Covid-19, I never got to walk down the isle for graduation. Instead, my school decided to implement this revolutionary drive-through graduation. Me, personally, preferred this over traditional graduation. I believe that high school graduations are overrated because anybody with a pea sized brain and dedication can graduate from high school easily. College is a different story but given the right circumstances, you have no excuse for failing to graduate from high school. However, I do regret that I never got to recite my introduction speech for the traditional graduation.

During my years of high school, I played two sports: Cross Country and distance track. I showed great knack for distance running since the beginning but I genuinely hated the sport. I hated running and I hated competitions. But I stuck with it all 4 years because of three reasons: My coach motivated me and created an environment that I enjoyed being around, Some of my teammates became few of my closest friends, and most of all, I loved winning. Even though I hated running, I was good at it. I was able to win many races (or at least win a medal) and my team and I got so good that we eventually went on to win the 4x800 relay at indoor state. With my senior year rolling around, I was getting tired of running however and I was not taking it very seriously. Out of many positives about the Covid-19, one of them is the fact that it allowed me to quit running without actually quitting. 

Another activity that I was part of all 4 years of high school was band. Like running, I was good at my instrument. I was able to make All-State my sophomore year, my junior year, and my senior year. But looking back at it now, I wasn't good at music, I was only playing the audition. I believe that playing music and auditioning with music are two totally different things. While one allows you to express your emotions through your heart, the other is an emotionless recitation of the excerpts that you've been playing over and over again for months. But I was good at it. Like running, I played like a robot. I scored very high on auditions because I did exactly what they expected me to do and no more. I realize now that what I played throughout middle/high school wasn't music.