My high school (SHA) wasn’t like most high schools. I went to an all girls’ Catholic school. Because SHA was a little different from most, I took many different classes that many students in traditional high schools take, as well as learned life lessons they wouldn’t have necessarily gotten. These are some of the things that my teachers in high school taught me that have stuck with me through all of high school and college.
The Best and the Brightest
One of my English teachers would always tell us that we were the best and the brightest students, and that was why he decided to teach at the school. Now this teacher was rarely serious, he ran around the school singing at the top of his lungs and drawing goats in classic blue blazers on the chalkboards, but when he said that he was dead serious. I never really thought about it before college but it’s such a confidence booster. Just telling yourself you are the best and the brightest will make you feel 10 times better on even your worst days.
“All I Want For Christmas”
This classic Christmas song, sang by Mariah Carey, is sometimes the only thing you need to put you in a good mood. One of the traditions at my school during the Senior Tree Lighting (the seniors decorate ornaments and then decorate the tree as the whole school watches and sings Christmas songs) is to sing this song as loud as we could and dance along. The whole atmosphere just made you feel so happy and full of the holiday spirit.
Tights
When most people think of tights they think of a torture device; This isn’t what I think of though. I think of how I had to wear them everyday to school and how during the winter they were soo much warmer than socks and how I never needed to worry about everyone seeing my underwear because the tights were covering them. So tights are always a good idea in the colder months.
Cookies and Coca-Cola
The Latin teacher at my school use to have a small bag of cookies and dip them in either a cup of Coca-Cola or coffee. Now he would do this every morning, and when you would ask him why, he would answer that his wife doesn’t let him eat cookies and drink Coca-Cola. Because of that he would only be able to eat them at work. This is one of the things that brought him joy; so sometimes if something is bad for you, you can still do it every now and then if it brings you joy.
Any thing can turn into a lesson
One time in science a girl told my teacher that during lunch she was eating a granola bar and there were these things in it. So being that this class was a microbiology/genetics/forensics class, my teacher decided we were going to look at it to figure out what it was. She took out a microscope and we took turns looking at it. In the end we discovered they were worms in the granola bar. She turned something gross into a fun way of learning.
Highlight your best attributes not your worst
I learned this not in any class I took but in the way my school advertised itself. The school is on the border of two towns. One being a great area but the other being not the best area and the address of the school has it located on the latter of the two. My school didn’t advertise with its location with this town name but instead saying it was located on Long Island. This showed me that why show off your bad traits when you can show off your good ones.