My Sophomore Year

It's the beginning of June 2013 and you know what that means? The end of my sophomore year at West. It's time to reminisce the good and bad memories! Mainly, the good memories. Let's start before the beginning of the school year because I play tennis. We got a brand new coach this year and my reaction to it was "Why do we have a old, fat man as our coach?" I know, it's mean but that was my initial reaction. As you can see, I had a girl coach last year so it was different for me. Since I am an underclassmen, I paid attention to how our seniors reacted to him. All of our seniors loved our coach, well pretty much everyone on the team did. Seeing that everyone on the team accepted and liked him, I allowed myself to see what he was really like. Soon, I rapidly grew closer to my coach and I'm very grateful that I didn't let my first impression block me. My coach didn't understand tennis so that wasn't really helpful. A good thing about him was that he was motivational. He made us feel proud of ourselves even when we lost a match. We lost our second seed player because she didn't like our coach and I'm not going into detail about it. Overall, this past tennis season was absolutely great and I couldn't be more happy to be a part of the team. All of us got along together and we just had fun! Because of my coach, he taught me to not judge people by their cover and many more.

First semester? So far in my high school career, that is my favorite semester EVER. I had all core classes, all honors and one A.P, and I don't regret it a single bit. It was a bit difficult sometimes but it was worth it all. I've literally have had the BEST A.P. United States History ever and I feel so honored having him as my teacher. That was my favorite class ever and sometimes I just wish I could go back to it. There's so many memories attached to it, either from my classmates or my teacher itself. It was just a wonderful experience and I couldn't be more happy. My other classes, however, were just lots of fun. I may or may not have liked the teacher but my classmates were just lots of fun! I've met some great people with interesting memories attached to it. For example, I played the Game of Life with my best friend and good friend of mines for my Oreo truffles in Honors Geometry. My Oreo truffles are just amazing, for your information. We really did bet on them but I won the game both times so I got them all. Since I'm a nice person, I shared some with them. Honors Chemistry? I've met one of my best friends in there and she's just awesome. In English, I can't quite point out a memory but I can just say that class was interesting since it's one of the only classes I have that's just my grade level. I had lunch with all of my best friends and many fun-filled memories were created during that period. I've had some discouraging moments but my coach taught me to ignore it even if it hurts. That's what I love about my coach; I can talk to him about anything. I could go on and on about first semester but it's time to move on to second semester.

Second semester did not quite fill up to first semester's standards but I definitely can say it was just an exciting semester! Since it was a different set of classes, it was interesting to experience things I haven't discovered yet. I finally returned to have band once again and the first time we did seating, I got first chair in my section (clarinet). I was so ecstatic and I guess you can say my "rival" (not really) wasn't too happy about that. I was soon defeated to second chair but I was okay with it. Sometimes you just need to accept defeat. You can't win all the time. In my section, it was just fun considering that I have an awesome clarinet buddy. I love band; it's just so much fun. When we went to festival, we came back with a 1 and two 2's. I couldn't be more proud of our wind ensemble. We played difficult music and were able to play it above the average ensemble. In March, we went to Walt Disney World and let me tell you, that was amazing! I had a wonderful time, at the parks and playing music. I can't go into detail because it would take me forever to tell you everything that happened. Moving on, I had Honors Pre-Calculus with the same teacher I had for Honors Algebra II. I thought the class was easy and there were definitely something hilarious moments in there! I love math. It's favorite subjects. You probably think I'm crazy. I don't love math because I'm Asian but because, there are very few solutions to a problem. What I mean by that is that , you can have several answers to one problem but everyone will end up getting the same answers (hopefully). In English, there could be a million answers to one question and I don't like that. I like seeing one accurate answer that you can explain. That's why English is one of my weakest subjects. Next, I had Principles of Business & Finance, I'm thankful that I took it because it's very helpful. I now know how to handle financial decisions and such. My last class of the day was psychology with my coach. It was a class mainly of juniors and seniors, with a few sophomores (like me). It was just so fun (during the experiments and random moments) and boring (when we read out of the textbook). The most recent memory I have from that last is my prediction from my coach. He predicted that I would be a surgeon, in fact, a successful one. I was so successful that I had my own reality TV show. Hilarious right? It gets better. He said that it got cancelled because I won't talk. You don't know me personally but I can be shy sometimes. Plus, I was supposed to get married to his son, one of my good friends. That's not going to happen but it was just funny, seeing everything connected to it.

Alas, graduation is coming. Some of my seniors friends will be leaving me and I'll miss them dearly. Especially my best friend since I was in kindergarten. She's my best friend forever and we're neighbors. We've share so many memories together and I just know I'll miss her a lot. Graduation is June 8th and I"ll be there, watching them graduate. I'll have to be there anyways. I'm required to play in graduation band so I guess that's a perk, because I'll be able to see them.

(My best friend, Savannah and I [I'm on the left; she's on the right])

My sophomore year was definitely amazing, if I had to describe it in one word. I've met one of my best friends that has the same birthday as me; I think that's pretty awesome! I love her! We call each other birthday twins well because it is true! Hahaha! There were a lot of memories created! I have to say the good memories outweighed the bad. I couldn't have asked for a better year and for God blessing me greatly. I couldn't be more thankful for a wonderful family and friends that are supportive of me.

(Thank you for reading this because I couldn't really think of a better way to kick off this blog. I hope you enjoyed it!)

-Jessica