I was a fairly good student in high school. I paid attention, I did my work and got fairly good grades. I didn’t particularly stand out though, which is how I liked it. But still, I had a few teachers that I really quite liked and decided I wanted to see again after my first quarter at college.
Well, let me be honest about this return: it's awkward. I’d been warned by my economics teacher that returning was a little awkward, but still I had high hopes when I went to see just a few teacher friends. They, of course, ask you about college and they give you the standard answers, but then you run out of questions. You and them don’t live in the same environment anymore; there isn’t any common ground so they scrape by with little things to talk about to try and keep the conversation going, but it isn’t easy.
When I returned after Thanksgiving, my first stop at the high school was to the attendance lady. She and I had a lot of interaction my junior year when I got a sinus infection and missed almost an entire week of school. Whenever I needed a cough drop or anything at all, I would just walk in and she would greet me with a large smile and say, “What can I help you with Julia?” I knew when I returned that I had to go see her, especially since my sister said she often asked how I was doing. I walked into her office, but there were a few other people there. Once they cleared out, we chatted for just a few minutes about college and how I liked it, and then she said it was nice talking to me and it was over. There wasn’t anything else to talk about, and it was a little unnerving to have a conversation with someone I haven’t seen in a long time be so short, but it was still great to see her.
Next, I headed up to the chemistry room. I suffered through AP Chemistry senior year, and got to know the teacher quite well through trying to catch up on makeup work when I missed just a day or two of class. I walked into her classroom and there were lots of students trying to get help with chemistry, so I walked up to the teacher’s desk. Ii was excited to see her and we talked about school and especially the transition into chemistry, because it's something we had talked about earlier. But still there were lots of awkward moments where we were scraping to find common ground along with her having to tend to students trying to figure out chemistry and orbitals. Overall it was just a little bit awkward, but I have no regrets about going back.
Finally, I went to the newspaper room. I was co-editor in chief of the newspaper my senior year and had been on it even longer than the current moderator, so I wanted to go back and see the students as well as the moderator. Conversation-wise, this was the least awkward of the returns. I was able to talk to students and teacher about college and life. The moderator now has my younger sister as a student, so I could ask him about her. What was awkward about this return was that I had arranged to come with my other co-editor in-chief. She had said she was going to get there about 15-20 minutes after the period started, but instead got there about five minutes before the period ended. Now I had to stand around and occupy myself for a large amount of time after I was done talking to people, but luckily students are very in and out in newspaper, so new heads disappeared and re-appeared, but there was a point in time where it felt kind of like why are you still here, but I had a reason.
Returning to your high school is a great thing to do. Show your teachers that you appreciate them. I would never say not to do it because it might be a little uncomfortable, but I’m saying that it is not neccesarily going to be just like it was in high school. Now, this is just my experience, and your student experience could be very different than mine. Your relationship with teachers in high school could change your experience going back, but I just wanted to share that mine was not exactly like most people's.
