When I was a freshman in college, most of the people I met initially were from around the Bridgewater area and had gone to high school in big schools. They all said similar things; they had three hundred plus kids in their graduating classes and even after four years they still didn’t know everyone in it. My own high school experience at that point was a lot different. In my class, there were only seventy-two people and we all knew each other a little too well. When kids from bigger schools described their experience, I had no idea how I would have done in a school like that.
In my small Catholic school, everyone knew everyone. I transferred there my junior year and it only took me a few weeks to know who everyone was. Sure, there were specific friend groups (I refuse to refer to them as cliques), but it was not so bad that they never only interacted with their own friend group. In classes, discussions were always better because you knew each other so well. You could always almost guess how people would react to different lessons.
The small size of the school made a lot of things easier. Relationships with teachers were always better because they actually knew who you were. They did not see you as just another student, they cared about you as a person. Even if you didn’t have a specific teacher, you knew they all cared about you. Even if your problem didn’t involve school, almost any of them would sit there and listen to you vent about it.
During my first two years of high school, I went to a larger high school. It was so large in fact that my class alone had almost five hundred kids in it. With so many kids, I always felt like a number and not a person. We even had to sign in and out of our classes and the bathroom using our student id numbers instead of our names. There were only a handful of teachers that actually truly cared and it was really disheartening. Feeling like no one cared made me resent being there. I absolutely hated being there.
This is why I am so grateful for my smaller high school. I am grateful for my religion teacher for letting me vent about life. I am grateful for my math teacher who never failed to put a smile on my face, no matter how bad my day was. I am grateful for my principal who took the time to welcome me. And I am especially grateful for the friends I already had there as I was going in that made it feel like home so quickly.
There are a lot of perks to going to a small high school. Sure, it may not be for everyone, but it was probably the best thing to happen to me. Plus, graduation was super short and I know that a lot of my friends were jealous of that. I may not have lucked out my first try at high school, but my second more than made up for it.
