At the end of eighth grade, I knew three things for certain.  One: I would not make any new friends from Boca. I was much too quiet and much too awkward for this to be a possibility. This was made even clearer to me from the two weeks of summer Ethics where there was a clear divide in the eighth grade seminar room. Two: freshman year counts for college applications, so I had to take the hardest classes I could and excel in them. Not only excel in them, but also do so breezily. Three: driving would be easy; all I would have to do is brush up on my Mario Kart skills, and in a year or so, a new car with a big red bow would be sitting in my driveway.

I was so positive about these three things that I didn’t even recognize when, a couple of weeks after getting into the swing of high school, I was proven completely wrong. By month two, I was already having sleepovers with my Boca friends. In an end of summer stress-induced nightmare, I dreamt that for every person from the Ft. Lauderdale campus, there was an exact clone from the Boca Campus. Although clearly there isn’t a Boca equivalent to every Ft. Lauderdale kid, I was surprised to notice that my group of friends had a group of Boca counterparts. By now, we’re all blended into one bigger group. I’m still not completely used to not knowing everyone in my grade, though. In middle school, each grade was kept very close in one seminar room, and everyone knew everyone. Coming into high school, our grade not only doubles, but we are also faced with three other unfamiliar grades.  The people you become friends with after this are more homogenous to you; either you’re in all of their classes, on their sports team, or in the same elective or club. The rest of the high school students usually remain strangers. They remain strangers until that awkward moment when you’re staring at someone for a minute too long, trying to place their face, and then you suddenly recognize them from their Facebook profile and it all clicks.  That happens to me way too often. Myth one, disproved; on to myth two.

I happen to have a very good auditory and visual memory, so I never really had to study much for tests in middle school. When I walked into my first day of Physics, I was told that I would probably start off the year with a B. That did not seem like something possible to me. With my mind set on the Ivy League Columbia University, I sometimes spend my free time Googling acceptance statistics – 26,179 applicants, 2,400 admits, and 97% of those kids were in the top 10% of their class. I knew that when given the choice between having an A in a regular class and a B in an honors class, the best option was to have an A in an honors class. In my quest for Columbia, a B was not going to cut it. The tests were hard, though, and I found myself constantly studying, trying to perfect my approach to each problem and remember which formula goes with which scenario. As the year progresses, I’m getting used to having to put more effort into school to get to the place I want to be, and the grades resulting are even more rewarding. Balancing academics with extracurricular activities and community service is tough, but as long as what I do out of school is something I enjoy, I don’t mind. Myth two, disproved.