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The Horrors of High School

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young adult, short story, humor
2nd
Draft

Published on:

May 19, 7:45pm

Word Count:

1932

Last Edited:

May 20, 2:13am

Work Description

This is a short story about my high school experience. Most of the names have been changed, but the stories are still the same.

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The fear instilled in me caused my legs to weaken.  I propelled myself out the the car and toward the building.  It was my first day of high school.  I went to homeroom and told the teacher my name.  She told me where to sit and I instantly put my head on my desk.  A girl sat next to me.  I later learned her name was Emma.  She would be in many of my classes for the next four years.  She would get a free ride to UMASS Amherst. 

I went from class to class.  My French class had a great teacher and most of the students in the class were from my tiny middle school.  It was quite the change to go from a middle with less than 200 students to a high school with more than 1000.  Everything seemed so much bigger and everyone seemed so much older.  I told my parents how one boy actually had a beard!  I felt like a lost, little ant in the maze of my backyard. 

When I got to study hall, I overheard an interesting conversation.  Two guys were talking about where to get the best illegal substances.  That year we had police dogs with their policemen search our school for these illegal substances.  This was quite the step up from middle school problems of "She made fun of me so I'm going to make her life hell for an entire year because I'm a bitch."

My last class of the day was English.  This is where I met the teacher that made my freshman year of high school a rather enjoyable experience.  I was convinced I would have a black man as my English teacher, but it was a skinny white woman with the last name of Freedman.  I don't believe I've ever met anybody with more passion for literature.  We had lush discussions about different novels and everyone's preferences.  Of course, there was plenty of playacting when we read Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

I remember how I went through most of my freshman year of high school in a state of fear and anxiety.  That didn't stop me from joining two clubs and the swim team.  Over time, I got more used to everything.  I'll never forget my biology teacher.  He started out with a great first impression.  He told our class that, obviously, boys are smarter than girls and he expected more from the males.  He should see me now in a school full of boys working my ass off to keep up.  My biology teacher ran the science team and I had to join.  I was obsessed with being on the right track to college.  My parents had instilled it in me since sixth grade that I HAD to got to a good college and there really was no other choice possible.  My brother, the math geek, told me to join the math team, which I did.  The people here were actually really nice and geeky.  The team captain ended up attending Harvard.  She's a Schteinbrook; they're meant for Harvard.  Her brother was our valedictorian and was also accepted to Harvard.  I don't think anybody would be capable of delivering a worse valedictorian speech than this Harvard-bound.  It was horrendous.  People in the front row started throwing up.  But, I'm getting ahead of myself, we are still on freshman year.  Where was I? Oh yes, I joined the swim team.  When it came to the swim team, I didn't fit in at all.  I'm not exactly the jock type... to say the least.  I still worked my pretty, little behind off that winter and went to most of the practices and the meets.  With so much swimming and pilates and dance class on Sundays, I became quite the skinny, little bitch.  And by bitch, I mean, tired as hell and worn out all the time.  Let's just say there was no more swim team after freshman year.

Shall we skip to sophomore year?  Sophomore year was AP Euro, English with Doreian, Algebra 2 with Ryan, and HELL.  HELL started around 9 o'clock and lasted for about an hour.  However, this class brought everyone's spirits DOWN TO THE DEPTHS WHERE ONLY SATAN ROAMS.  Any homework and studying that had to be done for this class was done through tears.  Any tests taken in this class felt like someone was beating you with a hammer against your chest.  SATAN or the teacher called this class chemistry.  Somehow, I scraped

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Discussion

Hey Lacie!  This reminds me  A LOT of the first fiction stories I ever wrote.  They were all based on my high school experiences and were pretty much retellings of actual events.  I approached it much the same way you do here.  What I mean is:  There's a lot of summarization going on here.  The last sentence of the first paragraph  is about a girl who ends up going to UMASS, then we cut to French class, then to Study Hall, then English, etc. 

I don't think it's bad to focus on a lot of different topics, but there is so much going on here, that it moves along a bit too fast.  I'd cut out a lot of the information that isn't necessary and really focus on the story you're trying to tell. 

And don't be afraid to be 100% honest.  Like calling weed or shrooms (or whatever drug it was) "Illegal substances."  Just say what it was.

The hard part about nonfiction is that there's so much you know about it.  Really focus on the story you're trying to tell, slimming down the rest of it. 

I enjoyed hearing about your high school exploits!

Opening Comments

I want to say that there are a lot of good ideas and events in here that make this story have a lot of potential. I think limiting it to one time might help this tremendously. Maybe start out with the narrator applying to grad schools and have flash backs when things trigger her memory to freshman, sophomore or junior year.

Pacing

This was very rushed. Slow it down and walk us through some of the scenes. For example, in the second page, you said:

It didn't work too well, but we did make up some great songs about the King of England.

What songs did you make up? This is a good part to bring Maggie onto the stage. What does she look like? How did you become friends? Show her and the songs.

Characters

I definitely wanted to see more of the characters. I did not get a good feel for any of them. The most important ones, I am guessing are the narrator, Maggie and Liza. Maybe descriptions and fleshing out scenes would help that along.

Dialog

There needs to be some dialog. There wasn't any, and some scenes would make great places to put in dialog. It reads more scholarly, like an essay, when it would be more assessable as a story.

 not bad...some things were a little vague but it was good....i understand alot of those feelings too. Keep writing and make sure you pay attention not to give away the story in the first paragraph and not only describe the names but what they look like or talk about. Give the reader a glimpse of how you imagine this person being like so that way they have a little room to imagine and somethings they can rely on. Keep it up though!

 Yeah, we've all been there and done that in high school. I feel ya!

Now to the review.

I couldn't find any dialouge as I read this piece. One scene or another could use some of that.

Secondly, where are the character descriptions? All I got was the narrator, Maggie and Liza. There should be more than two or three members of the cast.

Besides the pacing being rushed, you left out a few details like how you these people and so fourth. Above that you really did a nice job here. Keep writing, homegirl!

This first page has the making of a great story, however, in the first paragraph, I believe "propelled myself" could use some work. Was this an urban school? The first page leaves the reader wondering as you state you expected to have a "black English teacher" but instead got a white teacher with a passion for literature. There seems to be no context for your thoughts here. If this was indeed an urban school and was able to send students to Harvard, it must have done something right and needs to share the secret.  I look forward to reading more pages of your, seemingly, not too great high school days.  Excellent story - I enjoyed this first page.   Shilox7

 

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