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By Juan Adame
This year for my Freshman year of high school I decided to attend Envision Academy. I originally hadn’t even heard of this school until they came to my middle school in my 8th grade year for my school’s high school fair.
The one thing that originally sparked my interest in Envision Academy was the fact that this school was a smaller school and that they didn’t have a gym class. Although my dad was skeptical about letting me attend this school because he knew that I had no friends there with me, he allowed me go to this school anyway after lots of convincing. Envision Academy requires that all incoming 9th grade students attend an overnight college trip at Berkeley College, which is where I met my other classmates. On the bus ride that we took over to Berkeley College I was very nervous. I feared, based my other experiences in school, that the kids would be mean. I was especially nervous because I found out that I had to become roommates with someone that I barely knew.
Upon arriving at the college my first fear was thrown out the window because I realized that the kids weren’t as intimidating as I thought they were going to be and most of them were actually quite nice. On the first day of the college trip they split us into our advisory groups and had us do a lot of team building exercises including a scavenger hunt and an activity called “The Broken Heart Seminar.” Basically it’s an activity where you share things that have hurt you so that you can become closer to your advisory group. We even got tours of the extremely large campus and got chances to sit in on college course classes.
From that day on I knew that Envision Academy was an amazing school with teachers that really care about their student’s personal and educational lives, which is why I’m glad that I joined the Envision Academy community. I really enjoyed my Freshman year of high school and I do plan on returning and graduating from Envision Academy. It’s very important to learn as much as you can about any type of community that you want to join before hand, so that you have as much knowledge as possible on what’s expected of you. It’s also very important to not allow your fears to stop or discourage you from doing something that you want.
This commentary originally aired on Youth Radio Raw’s Core Show.