Opinion Writing

As my high school career seems to fly by, my attention is more and more brought toward my future. But since entering my senior year, I have also been reflecting back on the last 3 and a half years of my life and the lessons I have learned. I often think about how prepared I really am for the future, and while there are always ways to improve on what is being done and taught, I do believe that Bennington High School has done a good job of preparing me for life outside of high school. 

There are classes/subjects like math and science that I don’t care for too much, and I don’t believe have made a huge impact on me because I don’t plan on entering any kind of STEM field, but for some, it may be the thing that prepares them for an engineering or medical career, in which case it may impact them and prepare them well for life outside of high school. For me, the classes that have been the best for me are classes like choir and AP Geography, because they teach how to come up with solutions to problems while the aforementioned classes teach a very specific and precise way to solve problems. Choir has been a wonderful experience for me ever since I joined my junior year. It has helped me meet so many new people that I would have never had the pleasure of knowing before, and it helped strengthen some of the relationships I had before. But the biggest thing I will take away from this class is the lessons on compassion, personal responsibility, problem-solving, and working as a team. Choir teacher Mr. Hanke is always focused on those core values and wants everyone who steps into his class to leave not just a better singer, but more importantly a better person with skills that are transferable to any facet of life. AP Geo is a class that has impacted me because of the way it offers many different solutions to a problem and opens my eyes to different viewpoints on many issues. The class is not so much memorization of dates and terms and names (although that is still important) it is more of how these dates, names, and places affect the world, and how we can learn from the successes and failures of the people in history to better understand ourselves and the world around us.

Another aspect of high school that has prepared me for the future is the sports I have been involved in. Cross country taught me so much in the short 3 years I was a part of it. I joined during the height of the Covid pandemic and it helped me through so much. During the time of masks and social distancing, I always had cross country to look forward to at the end of the day. It reinforced in me the importance of hard work and not giving up, even when your body and mind tell you to quit. It gave me strong role models to look up to and strive to be more like, and it gave me comradery like I never had before. It helped me be grateful for the little things in life. I enjoyed sitting at a park bench talking for hours on end in the early morning, I savored the extra bit of rest we would take in between some of our reps, and even when things weren’t going my way or the team’s way, I knew I always had a group of brothers who would have my back. Soccer has also been a huge part of preparing me for life outside of high school. While I am not done with my high school soccer journey quite yet it has already taught me many lessons. The biggest one is learning from disappointment and failure, and learning not to fear it. I used to fear failure a lot, and still do sometimes, but with the many failures I’ve had during my last 2 seasons I have learned that they are catapults to improving myself. Related to learning from failure, soccer also taught me that no matter how good things are going at any given moment, fortunes can quickly turn. There were times when my team and I were riding high, whether it be a big win streak, or me scoring 5 goals in a week. But sometimes we would get complacent, walk into games like it was a win from the start, and end up in scrappy battles against statistically far inferior teams. So through that, I learned to never underestimate anyone, and give everyone respect as a competitor. 

Leadership is another thing that high school has taught me, much through the sports I take part in. I was a captain in my senior season of cross country, and in my junior and soon senior season of soccer, and it has helped me so much with leadership, taking responsibility, and putting myself out there. As a captain I take my role on the team very seriously, I understand that my actions reflect the entire team, good or bad. I also feel a great responsibility to the players who have entrusted me with the honor of leading them. It has helped me understand that someone is always watching, and while that may not always be a coach or teacher, it may be a freshman who is seeing his captain skip a rep, mess around at practice, or make distasteful comments about a teammate, as a leader that can’t happen.

But possibly the most significant things that high school has taught me aren’t sports or classes, although they are connected to this. It taught me the value of surrounding myself with people who will support me and challenge me to become a better person. There’s a saying that you are the sum of the 5 people you spend the most time with, and I can say that there is a lot of truth to that. I am very blessed to have the friends that I have and can’t imagine my high school experience without them. My parents do their best to support me in whatever I’m doing, but ultimately it’s my friends who see me every day, at both my best and my worst. So even if these people that I’m with aren’t with me forever, they have instilled in me the value of having good friend and being a good friend.

I know that my opinion may not be shared by all of the students at Bennington High School, and I have some advice for those who disagree with me. Get involved, because I only started enjoying high school once I became invested in it. Step out of your comfort zone, because no growth is going to happen there. So whether that be auditioning for the musical, taking a woodworking class, or talking to someone new, do something that challenges you. And lastly, surround yourself with people who truly care about you and will encourage you to do the right things. If you do all three of those things, you still may not enjoy high school, and you may still be dying to get out of here, but you will become a better person who is more prepared to handle the challenges of the real world.