Here is the next set of questions: "What kind of school did you go to? Were you a good student? What was your favorite subject? Least favorite? Who were your friends? Who was your favorite teacher and why?"
That is a lot of related questions to cover, but I'll try not to make this into a book. For starters, I did not go to just one school. Because we moved around a bit when I was growing up, I attended four different elementary schools. I also went to one junior high school and one high school. I'm going to skip the first question for a moment, though, and answer the other ones before I describe the different schools I attended.
Overall, I was a very good student in school. I generally liked learning new things (I still do) and I always had this inner drive to do my best at whatever I did. I was blessed with a reasonable amount of intelligence, and combining that with my desire to excel meant that I usually did very well in school. I was also very well behaved because I hated getting in trouble and I had a strong desire to please my teachers. I remember getting pretty positive feedback from most of my teachers, which I loved, and this motivated me to try even harder to do my best.
I don't remember having a "favorite" teacher. In general, I liked almost all of my teachers. I didn't like it when teachers were grumpy or unfair (or what I perceived to be unfair) or intimidating. As I got older, especially in junior high and high school, I came to appreciate teachers who were cheerful and enthusiastic about their subject. I came to recognize that some teachers were better than others and I respected the ones who had a thorough knowledge of their subject and knew how to teach it. I remember my AP English teacher (Mrs. Morris) and my AP US History teacher (Mr. Allred) being particularly good at teaching those subjects, and I learned a lot in those classes.
As far as subjects go, I always liked English (reading, not the grammar part), and history best. I did NOT like math! Ironically, although I never felt like I understood math very well, I always tested well in math and was put in advanced math classes. I remember shedding more tears over math homework than any other subject. I did have some good math teachers, though. I had a really good Algebra teacher in 8th Grade (Mr. Thompson) who would teach us the formula, but then he would show us why the formula worked. That always made a lot more sense to me and really helped me learn the formulas. For that reason, I was able to get a pretty good grasp of Algebra, which helped me a lot in the math classes that followed. I had the same math teacher for Geometry in 9th grade and Algebra II in 10th grade--Mrs. Walters--and I really liked her too.
I didn't like PE classes either. Let's face it, I'm totally uncoordinated and have no athletic talent whatsoever. In elementary school, I hated it when we played kickball. I was no good at this game and I remember boys getting mad at me when I didn't play well. Once I got to junior high, I didn't mind PE quite so much (although I never looked forward to it). We did some units--like bowling, golfing, and field hockey--that I kind of enjoyed. In general, I didn't like team sports because I didn't like causing my team to do poorly. I also didn't like looking dumb when I missed the ball in games like volleyball. To fulfill my last PE credit in high school, I took a class called Recreation. We learned about things like horseshoes and fly fishing. I didn't mind that too much either, but I was still glad to be done with PE!
I enjoyed music and art classes (although I don't have much artistic talent either) and I also remember liking geography and Spanish. As I got into high school I had a lot more choices of classes to take. I took a lot of business classes, like typing and accounting, Although I didn't like math, I DID like accounting a lot. The math for accounting is very basic, and I found that accounting was more about organizing and interpreting numbers than about adding and subtracting. After taking the first two accounting classes available, I wanted to take more. There weren't enough students to have a whole Accounting III or Accounting IV class, so I went to an Accounting II class and the teacher gave me my own work to do. I worked independently and the teacher was there to help me if I needed it. During my senior year of high school, I signed up to be an office aide for one of my classes and I was assigned to work in the accounting office, which in really enjoyed. In high school I also enjoyed taking several sewing classes, an interior design class, and a needle arts class. I was able to take Seminary classes during the school day throughout high school and LOVED those. I also took choir classes every year from 7th grade on and loved singing in choirs.
So now a little bit about each of the schools I went to. I began Kindergarten right after we moved to Houston, Texas. The school year had actually begun a week or two before we moved, so on my first day of school I was "the new girl" in my class. Everybody else knew what was going on and I felt pretty lost. But I did learn the classroom routine quickly and soon felt at home. My first school was Edward H. White II Elementary School in El Lago, Texas:
It was named after an astronaut (who had lived in my neighborhood) who was killed in a fire during a launch test. Both of these pictures were taken from the front of the school, but we didn't usually enter the school from these doors. On one of the sides, there was a similar outside covered area with two sets of doors for entering the school, and these are the doors I remember using most of the time. In between the two sets of doors, there were a couple of large bike racks. In Kindergarten, Amy and I were in a carpool with a number of other kids in the neighborhood (I remember their names were Eddie, Kevin, Samantha, and Sally) but in first grade I started riding my bike to school every day. I can still remember a lot about the route we took to ride to school and I can trace most of it out on a map. When looking at this side of the school, my Kindergarten class was just inside the left set of doors, on the right side of the hallway. Amy was in the other Kindergarten class, which was right across the hallway from my class. In first grade, my class was just inside the right set of doors on the left side of the hall. Amy's class was right next to mine--there was a door between our classrooms that the teachers sometimes used.
I attended Ed White in 2nd and most of 3rd Grades, too. In 2nd Grade, my classroom was in the "back" of the building (really the side opposite from the Kindergarten and 1st Grade classrooms). The playground was right outside. In third grade, I was somewhere in the middle of the building, near the cafeteria. Besides the locations of my class rooms, I don't remember a lot about the layout of the school except that there was a large cafeteria in the middle of the building with a stage at one end. The stage was "double sided" (or there were two stages back to back)--there was another large room (but not as large as the cafeteria) on the other side of the stage where we sometimes had smaller programs or did things like jump roping during the winter when it was cold outside.
Last fall, I stumbled across some newspaper articles on the internet about my old school. They were holding a celebration to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the school, which was opened in 1965. There were several pictures taken inside the school, and I could tell by looking at these that the school hasn't changed much since I was a student there. Here are a few of these pictures, plus a few others I found on the school's website:
This picture shows the steps and part of the stage from the cafeteria side. Apparently, they made a "candle" for every year since the school opened. I can see candles for all of the years that I attended the school--1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, and 1977.
I remember that the teachers ate at a table in the cafeteria with the kids. There was a "traffic light" in the cafeteria and if it was green, we were allowed to talk. If it was yellow, that meant it was getting too loud and we needed to quiet down or the light would be turned to red. If it was red, that meant that no kids were allowed to talk. The school janitor, "Mr. Bud", would patrol the cafeteria when the light was red and if he caught you talking, you were sent to sit on the stairs to the stage. Mr. Bud was normally very nice to the kids, but when the red light was on, he would walk around with this big glare on his face! I was usually very careful not to talk during these times, but one time in 3rd grade Mr. Bud caught me whispering and sent me to the stage. I was completely and totally mortified, but no one made a big deal about it later.
This picture shows one of the hallways, and it looks exactly how I remember the hallways looking. In particular, I remember that all the classrooms had those windows at the ceiling level. Most of the classrooms did not have windows to the outside, but the windows by the ceilings let in light.
This is the current principal of the school (far left) and two of the other principals. In its 50 years, the school has only had four principals! This is mainly because the man in the middle--Mr. Talley--was the principal for nearly 30 years. He was the first principal of the school (beginning in 1965 and including all the years that I was there) and he didn't retire until 1992--the year I got married!
A few more hallway shots:
Here's another picture of the cafeteria (at a different event). The space shuttle in the corner was not there when I attended the school--the space shuttle was still in the developmental stages then! The rest of the cafeteria, however, looks how I remember it. The serving area of the cafeteria was behind and to the right of the man standing up in the picture. The doors behind him led to the hallway where my 1st grade classroom was located.
This picture totally tickled me because I remember being in little programs at school and instead of elaborate costumes, we usually had little headbands on that we had made, like the ones shown in this picture:
This picture was taken from the smaller room on the other side of the stage from the cafeteria. It looks just the way I remember it too:
This picture was probably taken near one of the entrances to the school:
A few pictures from each of my years at Ed White Elementary:
This is my Kindergarten class. I went to Kindergarten in the morning. There was another class in the afternoon. My teacher was Mrs. Rubenstein. I am on the very end of the front row (on the left side of the picture, in the blue dress). The little boy on the end of the 2nd row in the blue plaid shirt was Jeff--he was my "boyfriend". All the carpool kids were in my class with me. Sally is two down from me, in the yellow and green dress. Samantha is on the end of the 3rd row back, on the left side of the picture (behind me) in the red sweater. Eddie is in the middle of the back row in the orange and brown striped shirt, and Kevin is two kids from the right of the picture in the same back row, in a blue shirt. I remember the blonde girl in the red dress with the apron (similar to mine; her name was Jessica) and the girl on the front row second from the right side of the picture (in the green dress; her name was Carla) were both members of our ward but neither of them came to church very often. The little girl on the very end of the front row was named Haruna. She was in my class or Amy's class nearly every year we went to this school and I remember being invited to her house for a "doll party", which I learned was a Japanese tradition.
In Kindergarten we had snack time and nap time. At recess, we played on the grass right outside our classrooms, not on the playground with the older kids. I remember playing with Amy and a girl in her class named Vanessa at recess. I don't remember a lot about the work we did. I do remember my teacher would have us all sit on the floor in front of her orange chair every day so she could teach us things like letters. We had a place where we could paint and I wanted to paint but I never did it because we were required to wear smocks over our clothes and I thought the smocks looked dumb!
I don't remember having close friends at school when I was really young. I usually liked everyone and played with whoever was available. The kids I considered my "real" friends were the kids I played with in the neighborhood, which included the kids in my carpool and a couple of other girls who lived on our street, but who were a year younger than me.
This is my 1st Grade class. I'm on the front row on the far left of the picture, again! My teacher was Mrs. Mickelson. Mostly I liked her, but she used to get annoyed with me for being timid and talking very quietly when I was asked a question. I remember learning to read in 1st grade and I have loved reading ever since. I remember doing a unit about Texas in first grade, where I learned that the state flower was the blue bonnet. I also remember carving a replica of the Alamo out of Ivory soap. Sometime during my 1st Grade year we had a tornado come really close to our school. We had one outside window in this classroom and the sky got pitch black, even though it was the middle of the day. My teacher had me help her demonstrate how to crawl under our desks and cover our necks with our hands, in case we had to do that. I remember seeing our principal standing outside near our classroom watching the sky, and his tie was blowing everywhere. I felt both excited and scared. Luckily the storm blew by without causing any damage to our school.
In my 2nd grade picture, I am still on the end of the front row, but this time I am on the far right of the picture instead of the far left. My teacher was Mrs. Litton. I remember I really liked the girl standing next to me; her name was Nina. I was also friendly with the girl on the opposite end of the front row from me, whose name was Suzanne. I also remember befriending a girl named Karen, but she moved near the beginning of the school year. There was kind of a funny "clique" thing going on in this class, though. One of the girls (her name was Kelly) was the most popular girl in the class. For some reason, every girl in the class wanted to be friends with Kelly! Eventually, she had a group of girls she gathered around her and they were the "popular" ones. I don't remember caring much about being in this group, and as a result, I was one of the "outcasts". This really didn't bother me. I remember memorizing math addition facts during this school year. We each made a small drawing of ourselves on construction paper and put it on a chart on the wall. When we had mastered a set of addition facts (like the 3s or the 5s), we got to move our person up the chart. During 2nd Grade we also learned about US history and we had a play and a celebration to commemorate the United States' Bicentennial Birthday, which was coming up that summer.
In 3rd Grade, my teacher was Mrs. Grounds. In the picture, I am once again on the front row, standing in the same position as I was in my 2nd grade class photo (I'm in a yellow dress). I got to be pretty good friends with a girl named Cynthia in this class. She is also in the front row, 2nd from the left side of the photo, in the green dress with the white pinafore. I remember that 3rd grade was kind of a milestone, and school got more serious at this point. We no longer had soft cover "workbooks" that we could write in; we received hardback textbooks that we had to take care of. We had to make book covers out of brown paper grocery bags, and it was a huge no-no to write in our books at all. Instead, we had lined paper and we had to do all of our work on the paper. We also had to start doing all our writing in cursive instead of printing. I also remember memorizing the times tables was a big deal in 3rd grade. At first, I thought I'd never learn them all, but eventually I did. I still remember moms coming in to help at school and being taken out into the hall by different moms to be tested on the times tables.
I have a few other memories from these years. Kids didn't have backpacks in those days, we had book bags. I remember having plastic vinyl school bags for carrying books and lunches to school and back. They looked similar to this:
I don't remember exactly what my bags looked like, but I think my first bag was a solid color (not flowered like the one above) with a felt picture on the outside. I do remember that on the first day of Kindergarten, at the end of the day, my teacher told all the kids to get out their bags to get ready to go home. All the kids pulled a bag out of their desk, but when I looked in my desk, there wasn't a bag. I was confused until my teacher explained that everyone had to buy their own bag. She gave me a list of school supplies that mom needed to buy for me.
Our school served hot lunches, but I never ate hot lunch. I brought lunch from home. In those days, we had metal lunch boxes that included matching thermoses. One of my lunch boxes looked like this (both sides):
Another one looked like this:
That's what the thermoses looked like. They were insulated and kept things cold or hot. You had to be careful not to drop them, though, because if you did, the insulated lining would break. The outer lid could be used as a cup. There was another smaller lid inside that twisted on tighter to keep the liquid from leaking. (Seems like they always leaked a little, though.) For lunch I always had a sandwich, a piece of fruit (apple, banana, or orange usually) and 2 cookies (almost always homemade). I always had milk in my thermos. I got very bored with sandwiches and wished I could buy hot lunch most of the time, although the kids who ate hot lunch complained that it was gross.
Amy and I were never in the same class, and we made different friends. I remember sometimes going with her to her school friends' houses to play and sometimes she came with me to play at my school friends' houses.
I wore a dress to school nearly every day until I was in about 4th Grade. I was not allowed to wear my hair "down" to school except on picture days. The rest of the time, I had to wear my long hair in ponytails or braids. My hair was very soft (still is) and I remember other girls in my classes liked to touch my hair and play with it. We would be standing in line waiting to go somewhere, and the girl behind me would be running her hands through my ponytails! I found this rather annoying, especially when a teacher would notice and reprimand us.
We sat at desks, either in rows or pushed together in "tables'. The desks had wood grained tops and had a space underneath, which was open in front, for us to store our books, papers, pencils, etc. We always had to clean out our desks before parent nights. At the end of the school year, we spent the last couple of days cleaning our desks and chairs and packing up everything in the classrooms.
Back then, we had fewer days off during the year but longer summer vacations. (My kids get about 2 months off in the summer. I used to get 3.) We had long breaks for Christmas and Easter, and we used to have Christmas parties and Easter egg hunts at school--those aren't allowed anymore!
My overall impression of the school system in Texas, even at that young age, was that it was very good. I remember feeling that I was expected to learn and do my best.
In March of my 3rd Grade year, my family moved to Lancaster, California. My new school was Joshua Elementary School (named for the cactus-like Joshua trees that were very common in this area):
This is one of the only pictures I could find of this school. I don't think the blue trim was on the building back then, but I could be remembering wrong. This school seemed strange to me at first because it wasn't one big building. Instead, there were many smaller buildings with two or three class rooms in each building. The gym / auditorium / cafeteria was another big building and the school offices were also in a building by themselves. All of the buildings were connected by covered walkways like the one you can see in the photo above. I thought it was weird to have "outdoor hallways" but this was southern California, so it didn't get very cold.
I also found this picture of Joshua School:
(The school is in the bottom left corner!) Remember that in one of the pictures of my first school, Ed White, there was a space shuttle in the corner of the cafeteria? Both of my first two schools associated themselves with the space shuttle, which may seem weird, but it was no accident. My first school was located only a few miles from NASA's Johnson Space Center. My second school was near Edward's Air Force Base--the test flights for the space shuttle were held there. The space program was actually the reason I lived in these two places, since my dad, as an IBM employee, was working on NASA contracts. (That's a topic for another post, though!)
I remember my first day at Joshua school was St. Patrick's Day. We almost forgot, but one of us remembered as we were about to leave, so a few of us had to make changes to our outfits so that we'd be wearing green. When my mom took us into the office to register us, the secretary was on the intercom calling all the classes to come to an assembly. We were taken to the auditorium to join our classes there. I still remember that the assembly was about England...a high school exchange student showed us slides and told us all about his home country of England. My new teacher's name was Mrs. Yergeson. I remember the kids in my class were pretty nice--a lot of them introduced themselves to me. There were no extra desks in my classroom and it took a few days for them to get one for me. In the meantime, I sat on one end of a semi-circular table where my teacher would teach small groups. It was a bit distracting, but I was able to get my work done anyway. The desks in this school were different, too. They had plastic tops and the chairs were attached to the desks. We had a space under the desktop for our things but they weren't open in front. Instead, the top of the desk lifted up on hinges that were in the back. I always thought this was not a good idea because it was difficult (if not impossible) to get anything out of your desk when you were in the middle of something and had papers and books on the desk top.
I was only in this class for a few months, but I remember getting to be pretty good friends with a girl named Tanya. (She moved away that summer, though.) I also had a "crush" on a boy named David.
I quickly discovered that the school system here worked on a different time table than the one in Texas. Most of the kids in my class were still struggling to memorize the multiplication tables and write in cursive. They all thought I was super smart because I knew all the multiplication tables through the 12s and could write in cursive!
One thing I was excited about is that I got to ride a bus to school instead of riding a bike. It was pretty cool at first, but the novelty wore off, of course.
In 4th or 5th grade I started bringing lunch from home in a brown paper bag instead of a lunch box. I would bring 15 cents to buy a little carton of milk. Regular and chocolate milk cost the same, so I usually got chocolate!
Here are my class photos from Joshua School (I don't have a picture of my 3rd grade class from this school because they took them before I moved in.) :
4th Grade--I am the girl in the front row, right behind the sign. My teacher's name was Mrs. Tittle. She wasn't there the whole year, though, because she had a baby in March. We had a long term substitute from about January through the end of the year. Her name was Mrs. Triscuit. She was older than Mrs. Tittle--had grown children, although her youngest daughter was about our age. I really liked her. The girl standing right next to the teacher is my friend Kim. We have stayed friends and kept in touch all these years! I also remember being friends with a girl named Teresa, who is in the back row, second from the right.
In 4th Grade, I remember learning about California history--the Gold Rush and a lot about Spanish missions. We visited an old Spanish mission for a field trip. We had one assignment where we had to either draw a picture of a mission or build a replica of a mission. I wanted to build one, but Mom said that would be too complicated, so I drew one instead. When all our projects were done, our teacher had the class vote on their favorite model and their favorite drawing. I won the 1st place award for the drawing, which surprised me. During 4th grade, I also started attending a special class for gifted students (MGM). My third grade teacher recommended me for this program and I remember going somewhere to be tested to see if I qualified. Amy and Tim were both in this program as well. We went to a class for a few hours once a week (I think it was once). We met in a little bus that was set up inside like a classroom.The bus would go to different schools on different days. I remember that I really enjoyed these classes. I was the only student in my class who went to this program. That was because they put all the students who were in MGM in the same class for their grade, but they wouldn't put Amy and I in the same class. So Amy was in the class with all the other MGM 4th Graders, but I was not. The following year, my mom persuaded the school to put both of us in the class with the rest of the MGM students, so for the first time ever, Amy and I were in the same class at school:
Our teacher was Mrs. Peterson. Amy and I are in the front row (of course!) right behind the sign. I'm in orange and she's in green. I really liked this class but we ended up moving again about halfway through the school year, a few weeks before Christmas--this time, to Utah.
By the time we arrived in Utah, school was going to be out in a few days for Christmas vacation, so we didn't start school at our new school until January. All the elementary schools in the area were very crowded and a new elementary school was in the process of being built. In the meantime, the kids in our neighborhood were attending school in a little red brick school building that was built in 1912 called Spencer School. We thought this was very fun! The school was small and there was only one class for each grade, so Amy and I were still in the same class. Our new teacher was Mrs. Moore. I don't have a picture of Spencer School from the year we attended and sadly it has been torn down since then, but here are a few vintage photographs of Spencer School from its earlier days:
It looked basically the same the year I attended it, except there was a very busy paved road (State Street) in front and another paved road (800 South) along the side that is visible in the 2nd picture. There was a dairy right next door, on the opposite side. The school was set back from the main road a pretty good distance--we had a large lawn including a softball / kickball field in front. I remember all the kids at the school fit onto two buses. My classroom was on the second floor in the back--you can see the windows to my classroom in the second photograph. Tim's sixth grade class was right across the hall, and I used to go across the hall to his class for math lessons. The school consisted mostly of classrooms...we didn't have a cafeteria or a gym or anything like that. We ate lunch in our classrooms, which was rather a novelty. In the front foyer, there were two big staircases. The one on the right was the "up" staircase and the one on the left was the "down" staircase. There was a small playground in the back, but I remember being a bit bored at recess because there wasn't a lot of equipment. Behind the playground / parking lot, there was a large open field. A few blocks away was an LDS church, and we would walk over there for gym classes, assemblies, and programs.
The new school, Northridge Elementary, was completed in time for my 6th grade year:
It was fun to go to a brand new school. We got to help choose the school colors and mascot. One thing I thought was weird about this school was that the playground was elevated a few feet from the surrounding grounds. (Hard to explain.) I stopped by this school when I was in Utah last summer, and took this photo:
It looks basically the same as it did when I went there except there was an addition at the north end of the school. My teacher this year was Mr. Cramer. Here is my class:
I'm on the front row, of course. I'm second from the left (wearing red). Friends I had in 5th and 6th grade (and beyond) were Amy, Corey, Lorrie, Margo, and Suzanne. They were all in my ward, too. One thing I remember doing in 6th grade was a play and square dancing program. For the play, I was the announcer, and I sang a short solo in one of the songs. The whole school also had a big dance festival at the end of the year. I got to eat hot lunch most days in 6th grade--I enjoyed that! Even though school lunches have a reputation for being gross, I usually liked what they served and I preferred hot lunch to the boring sandwiches I had to bring from home.
In 7th Grade, I began attending Orem Junior High:
These pictures are recent photos and the school looks a bit different from what it did when I went there...they have obviously done some remodeling. This is the side where the buses dropped us off in the mornings. The middle section was remodeled and looks completely different.
I don't remember this rock sign being in front, either, but it looks pretty nice. (The school mascot was the Jaguar, which explains the paw on the sign.)
This is the cafeteria side of the building. the curved part with windows on the right of the picture is also new. There used to be a small courtyard there with a brick wall around it. There were a few picnic tables in the courtyard and we could eat out there if we wished, when the weather was nice. The tall part rising up in the back is the gyms, and that part looks just like I remember it. Overall, the building was old and rather shabby when I went there. I'm glad to see they've made some improvements! We had 6 periods in our school day. Some classes lasted all year and others lasted half a year. Most of the classes I took were required, but I did get to take a few electives. I had some good teachers and enjoyed some of my classes in junior high. I particularly remember taking Utah History from Mr. Lott in 7th Grade...that was a good class. One of the things we did in this class is we learned the names and positions of all the counties in Utah. Mr. Lott had a large wooden map of Utah, divided up by counties. We had competitions to see who could put it together the fastest--great fun! One of the things I enjoyed the most in 7th Grade was being in the musical The King and I. Amy and I were both some of the king's children. In general, I remember being pretty miserable in junior high, though. I had reached the awkward stage (which sadly lasted until I was about 22!) and all my girlfriends had reached the pre-teen catty stage. I didn't know from one day to the next which of my friends would be speaking to me! I think pretty much everyone is miserable in junior high, though, right? I did continue to do well in classes, and this was a source of self esteem and comfort for me.
My junior high years were cut short because the year I started 9th Grade, they decided the junior high school was too crowded and they sent all the 9th graders to the high school instead. At the time I was a bit miffed about losing out on the chance to be the "oldest" class in the junior high school (and the special field trip to Lagoon amusement park that the 9th graders got to take) but in the long run I think I benefited from the wider variety of classes available at the high school.
I went to Orem High School. Our colors were blue and gold, and our mascot was the golden tiger. Orem High School was also old and shabby. I had a hard time finding pictures of it because about 5 years ago it was torn down completely and replaced with a beautiful new building. Here are a few I managed to find, though:
All these pictures are showing the main entrance to the school. The tall part was the auditorium, which was just behind the front foyer. The cafeteria was to the right of the foyer. (In high school I bought hot lunch sometimes, using my own money. Usually I brought lunch from home, though. We could also buy milk shakes and these big chocolate brownie-like cookies. I enjoyed doing that!) The main office was to the left of the foyer. There were a number of hallways running from the front to the back of the building, which were identified by letters--"B" Hall, "D" Hall, etc. All of these halls were lined with blue lockers:
Here's a picture of the new Orem High:
I've been inside it briefly and it's beautiful and I'm happy for the students who go there now. A new building was long overdue! But it's always a bit sad to see your old stomping grounds torn down, you know?
I've already talked a lot about the classes I took in high school. I enjoyed high school more than junior high and overall I was happier and more confident, but I still wasn't very comfortable in my own skin at this age, and I have no desire to go back to my high school days! Friends I had in high school, besides the ones mentioned previously for 5th and 6th grade, were Pam, Karen, and Paula. Pam and Paula were both in my ward too. Paula was my closest friend and I still keep in touch with her and visit her when I'm in Utah. We were roommates one year in college, too.
When I was in 9th grade, we were still on the 6 period system, but starting in 10th grade my school switched to an 8 period system. We had 4 periods each day that were 85 minutes long, and we alternated between "A" day and "B" day, so we were actually taking 8 different classes at a time. This system allowed me to take more of the classes that I was interested in taking and I liked having a day in between classes to work on homework. I worked really hard in high school and when I graduated, I had a 3.91 GPA and graduated 19th in my class. (I don't remember how many kids were in my graduating class, but there were hundreds--probably in the 300s somewhere.) The high school achievement I was most proud of was passing the two AP tests that I took. They were graded on a scale of 1 to 5, and at that time any score of 3 or above earned you college credit. I earned a 4 on AP History and a 5 on AP English. I put a lot of work into those classes and preparing for the tests, and I was thrilled to do so well. I was in one play in high school--in 9th grade I had a part in a musical version of Dickens' A Christmas Carol called Scrooge. Singing in choir was probably my favorite part of high school, along with attending Seminary classes--there was a Seminary building right next to the high school. (It's still there and looks exactly the same, but I couldn't find a picture of it.)
After high school, it was on to BYU. You can read all about BYU and my experiences there here.
1 comment:
Love the 70's outfits... ;) These questions are a great idea. I think I need the list from you. Also, that's so funny about girls playing with your hair all of the time!
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