Retrospect

Sometimes when I look back into my past, one year ago, two years ago, or even five years ago, I just smile think to myself 'good times man, good times'.

Middle School

I went to an International School for middle school in Athens, Greece. At that time, I was, what I like to call, a dork. I literally had two hoodies and two cargo pants, and every other day, I would wear the same thing. I did that for about 2 years, until my parents and my sister finally took me shopping. Academically, I was rather strong because our school had pretty low standards so I was sometimes known as a nerd, partially because I had decent grades, partially because I looked like one, and partially because I was Asian. I didn't have that many friends at that time, and those whom I occasionally hung out with were just people to hang out with when I had no one else to hang out with. I liked three girls within the three years I was there. I told the first one by writing it in a happy birthday card on her birthday. The second one never knew but always thought of me as a really good friend. The third one knew because it was so obvious apparently, and when she asked why I liked her, I said because she was Asian too. I also played a lot of tennis back in those days, and I would frequently hang out around the tennis court, with the coach and the others who had lessons, even though I didn't always have lessons. My best memories of middle school were probably at those tennis courts. Good times.

High school


High school was much more fun but also much more dramatic than I thought it would be. But I did learn a lot from high school. I moved to Maryland after living three years in Athens and attended a public high school in Montgomery County. Montgomery county was also were I grew up as a child, therefore I had a lot of childhood friends, all of which I met again in high school. The first group of people I hung out with were the friends of my childhood best friend. We got along pretty well but I still couldn't consider myself as one of them because I didn't know how to fit in. In late sophomore year, I met a girl in my English class that was really friendly, and I eventually became friends with her. In the first half of junior year, I hung out with her and her friends, which were all girls but I didn't mind. After winter break, some stuff happened and I ended up not hanging out with them anymore. For the rest of junior year, I struggled to have friends to hang out with until I befriended a new group of friends around junior banquet. My time with this group of people was probably the highlight of my high school life. We went to the pool, we went to play pool, and we did many other things. But towards the beginning of senior year, I realized that they weren't the people I wanted to hang out with. I just wanted to be cool and belong to a group. Therefore, I left that group and started hanging out with the FOBs (Fresh off the boat). They were all Taiwanese people and they always spoke chinese around each other. I liked hanging out with them but they were a very segregated group from all the other people, due to the language barrier. Up until the end of senior year I hung out with the FOBs and I even went to Prom with them. Good times.

Conclusion


Now that I think back to all these things, I realized how much I have grown and matured. I thought I was the coolest kid ever to hang out with that group of people in junior year but now I think that was the stupidest thing I have ever done. I remember there was this one girl who obviously disliked me because I apparently wasn't "good enough" for her, but now that I think about it, I honestly don't care if you like me or not because I'm not gonna waste my time on people like her. In conclusion, I think it's all part of the learning process and it's normal to make mistakes in your life. The most important part of that is to learn from those mistakes and do better in the future.