I've Finally Arrived

By Ryan L

Every second counts, and every second that consists of you being a bad person really adds up. The question I asked myself in 6th grade was “will I keep making excuses for myself, or will I improve?”

When I was in 6th grade, I was at the last stretch of elementary school. Academically, I was excelling, but a lot of the values that I have today would’ve been something that the old me would look down upon. For example, offensive slurs and ideals were things that I normalized and often participated in. The people I hung out with really made this behavior seem okay.

Fast-forward to 7th grade: I had a chance to rebuild myself. I went to CCA, a middle school where a lot of those from the elementary school I went to weren’t present. And one event that jump-started my path to bettering myself was surprisingly the pandemic. Of course, the pandemic wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows; I would also like to say that the pandemic wasn’t good for the world. But for me, the pandemic gave me a chance to interact and connect with other people that I would’ve normally never talked to.

So we’re in the middle of quarantine, and we’re all stuck in our houses with nothing to do. Naturally, we turned to social media to find others so we could somewhat remedy that connection some of us longed for. During 7th grade, I had a group of friends that really flicked a switch inside of my brain. My friends' diverse backgrounds and values made me realize that the ideals I held before were untrue.

7th grade wasn’t all good things though. One thing that I really struggled with was my effort in school. The difficulty of the classes I took during quarantine were way too easy, and it did not prepare me for the upcoming year, 8th grade. The unusual environment and flow of going back to in-real-life classrooms was something I had to reintroduce myself to. And if I am going to be honest, 8th grade was a really rough year.

One of the hardest parts of my 8th grade year was losing a lot of those friends that I held dear in 7th grade. Everyone started to move on and that really hit me hard. My grades started to drop and again, I was at an all-time low in my life. I felt like I was losing all of the progress I made and that made me drop even deeper in terms of my mood and just general happiness. Towards the end of 8th grade, it got a tad bit better, but I was still feeling the effects of that year as I was going into summer.

I had one last chance to make my life better and that was when I realized that I needed to change something. Connecting with those old friends and making new ones really helped me improve myself and make myself feel better. And I started to get invested into sports like badminton and activities like volunteering. Immersing myself into these types of events and activities helped distract me from other things in my life and got me more invested into school-related things.

And that brings me to now. I’m enjoying life way more than before; learning new hobbies and passions while also keeping in touch with other people is a huge part of why I feel so much better. While I can’t say my life is perfect, I feel that after three years, I feel better than I ever had before.

For the Warrior Times, this is Ryan Luu.