Hm.

This year, like every high school year tends to give me a thoughtful lesson in the end. Freshman year taught me the value of losing someone close to you, and sophomore year taught me to swallow my pride focus more on the future rather than the past. Where as this year, is a little different. In the beginning of the year, I was told that junior year is the longest and difficult year in high-school. Well, whoever told me that wasn’t exactly lying but they forgot to mention one thing. They didn’t mention how much thinking you do over the year, and how much learning you go through outside of the education realm. If I could summarize one major theme I learned this year, it would be what Mr. Newman my English teacher said. Take time finding yourself and finding who you really are because there are so many distractions in the world that in other words, mask our identities. Although it was only a brief mention before we left for Spring Break, it’s one of the few times when one of my teachers actually made sense in the message in which they were portraying to their students.

Most of my teachers in the past had given me a piece of information that I’ve held onto for my whole school career. Some of them quite useful where as other teachers taught me absolutely nothing except to never end up like them. Case in point my first semester English teacher. AP English was supposed to be advanced English, or at least that’s what it said on the course sign up sheet, and seeing as English is my favorite subject, I opted to take it. However I actually did not learn a single thing while I was in that class, except how to analyze the same story for 2 months and going nowhere with it. But, when entering into Mr. Newman’s English class, I was genuinely surprised because on the first week I arrived, we actually discussed as a class about a specific subject. I was sort of, taken aback at the whole situation because I was just expecting to do busy work for the whole period, however the engaging conversations really opened my eyes to how much things you learn by experiencing them. The many discussions we had all aimed to help each and every single one of us students out in life, and for that I thank those lessons my English teacher gave us.

The main thing I learned this year however seemed to stem off of those other lessons. Although only a brief mention it seemed, the idea of finding yourself over the break really had me thinking. “Who am I truly?” Well looking at it in a literal sense, I’m a human male. But what makes us who we are? Is it our actions or activities we partake that make us identifiable? If so, it would seem I would be a dancer, who plays guitar as a hobby, and a youth-group leader. However, is that truly who I am? Or is it the person who I show to the rest of the world? These questions surprisingly manifested from that one statement, “Guys try to find yourself, and try to find who you really are, because of all the distractions in our lives, we lose who we really are.”

So over the course of spring break, I actually attempted to “find myself.” To much avail, I learned a lot about who I was. I learned that I loved connect the dots, reading, I disliked rap and hip-hop, yet the culture I’m in forced me to like it, and I’ve grown a liking to writing short stories. I had the basics of wants and interests; however the distractions that my English teacher mentioned were entirely materials. It soon became not wanting a new coloring book to wanting the new play station, and evolving from the band you liked as a kid to the band your friends like. Every single High-school student can agree with me that, what they are right now is not who they truly are, but who they’re trying to be. Because, do we really know who we are until we achieve what we’re aiming for dating back to kindergarten? We don’t, and that’s a plain fact; however what we should focus on is finding who you really want to be, and who you let shape your personality within your life.

The idea of finding yourself when put in perspective seems a little daunting, because how exactly do you “find yourself?” There’s no set pattern or set objective to finding yourself except you, and your will to realize who you are. That question still remains in my head because honestly, I don’t think I truly have found who I really am yet. Am I really this dancer who plays guitar and leads a youth group, and is an average student at school? Or am I truly just David, the boy who still stutters after many years.

This still escapes me, my teacher wanted to keep that essay for some reason?

whatever. i'll know later on.