From first grade until seventh, my school uniform sweater was a plain grey-blue. Receiving the vibrant scarlet blazer in place of the bland blue was a revered rite of passage into eighth grade. Blue was childish and plain, while red was sophisticated and mature. Students waited anxiously for the back-to-school sales at Flynn O'Hara, dragging their haggard mothers to the small shop nestled between a run-down toy store and Chinese restaurant. Like shopping for school supplies, there was something incredibly satisfying about buying a new uniform for the coming year. Obtaining new material goods gave us the motivation to get through the first week or two of school.
The excitement at bumping into a friend while picking up your new status symbol was unparalleled, but the implications of graduating to a red sweater had an underlying sadness to them—we were growing up. Things were changing. In the coming year, we would scatter to the winds and root at various high schools, the notion of which still seemed scary and unfamiliar. I was more excited than my peers—eager to get on and see the world beyond sheltered private school gates and upper-middle-class suburban kids.
And yet a part of me still wanted to stay put. I would miss the two friends with whom I had grown close to in my eight years there. The school was a tiny, closed-off community in which everyone knew everyone—siblings, parents, even pets. I knew that this closeness, though inconvenient at times, had protected me from dealing with many of the issues I would face in high school. I was scared of leaving my bubble.
The eager half of me buried those feelings deep, putting on her brave face with that sweater every morning. I wore it day in and day out until I was dress-coded for the fraying, dingy sleeves. To me the threadbare fabric was still just as beautiful as the day I first plucked the hanger off its high shelf, polysynthetic ruby fabric glittering under the fluorescent lights. Thirteen-year-old year old me believed she had never seen a thing so beautiful.
Now I am at college. I am again struck by feelings of worry, of excitement, of sadness at leaving my hometown and friends. High school proved to be a transformative period for me. I am glad to have gone through it and much happier with who I am as a person than when I entered. Obviously, my course of development is not yet over—now that I have left my hometown towards Seton Hall, I will be in for another four years of wild change. My only hope is that this change will be a positive force and that now I've graduated from Lake Braddock's purple and gold into my new school's colors, it too will become a symbol—of what, I don't know. We'll just have to see, won't we?
