Things have changed a LOT at Horizons since I started in 2015-2016...

Well, this is my third year at Clear Horizons Early College High School, and I had almost forgotten I had this blog, and was apparently too busy to make a post in... what, MONTHS now?! Whoa! I guess Horizons has kept me busy during the school year, not to mention the summer kept me busy having fun as well! But anyway, we're back in full force, and I'm officially a junior! Oh, and things have changed a lot since I first started going here. A LOT of things. There's quite a few new teachers, the busing at some locations has changed (again)... there's a lot that I could talk about on just that particular topic.

But I can't, and won't, get into everything that I possibly could. I'll only talk about a few of the definitely noticeable differences, one of them being that there have been quite a few changes in what teachers are at Horizons. It changes every year, but every now and then, there's a noticeable change, and it's happened this year. Some of the awesome teachers, like Ms. Nylen, Mr. Martin, and Ms. McGill, have left us... and for us students who have had those memorable teachers, we will always remember them in our dear hearts, just like I will remember Mr. Martin deeply in my heart. And when awesome teachers leave, another takes place. But when it came to finding another ISM teacher because Ms. Nylen left... it was actually a rare moment. They got a freshman teacher who had been teaching at Horizons for a while and let her be the ISM teacher because she was licensed and capable of doing so. So now, the old English I teacher is now our new junior ISM teacher, and Ms. Kahlich is our senior ISM teacher. This change of teacher positions will be quite interesting, but we'll all miss those who left us...

And it seems that as I go up grade levels, something else also changes... and in this case, it's the freshman, not just at Horizons, but this time.... it's everywhere, and it's not good. The reason I say that is because at Clear Springs (where I wait for the morning bus), the freshman have quite literally taken over the cafeteria during the morning... freshman are stealing an excessive amount of chairs from the wrong table, and believe it or not, it's mainly the boys this time. Like today, actually, I sat down on a table and waited for my best friends who go to school at Springs to get here, and while I was waiting, I had several freshman steal chairs from my table. I actually tried to stop one of them the first time and tell them "Hey. You can't take the chairs at this table. I have friends wanting to sit here"... and guess what they ended up doing instead?! They actually went and stole the vacant chair from the OTHER SIDE. Wow. I actually got pissed and said "Of course. Of course the freshman don't listen", so I got up and stole a chair from a table that had too many chairs, and then replaced that particular chair. Then I had several MORE freshman boys go and steal MORE chairs from the EXACT same table, and I was like "I put the darn chairs back for a REASON." So I had to repeat the process. And in the end, the table behind me was far too crowded... there were at least two dozen freshman, ALL BOYS, sitting at the table behind me! Yeah! Not a good sighting at all! They have taken over Clear Springs.... it's supposed to be the other way around, where either the seniors or the staff are "in charge" of the campus. Oh, and did I mention it gets loud in there just before 7:00 AM? Like, c'mon... we just woke up. We need some peace and quiet around here.

The freshman at Horizons, thankfully, aren't so bad this year. I haven't met many of this year's freshman yet, but I can already tell they are a lot more well behaved. I haven't seen an excessive amount of hallway blocking yet, the voice levels aren't ridiculously loud (and it used to be that way), and they're nice in general. I can't wait to get to know some of them, as soon as I figure out who everyone is and who would actually be willing to be friends with me.

And now that I'm a junior, it seems I'm starting to have some more free time during school. I now have an 80-minute tutorial period (Tuesdays and Thursdays, shorter on Fridays), I'm free for lunch, I have passing periods, and I have the free time I get when a college class lets out early. But that's not to say that you should flat-out waste your time during the free time that you have here. It is possible to survive Horizons that way, but it's not recommended at all.

Oh, and the Horizons routes for me have changed a lot. In the morning, Clear Springs now also drops off at Clear View, which means it doubles as a Clear View AND Clear Horizons bus (route 127), and surprisingly, it makes sense, given that Clear View is basically on the way to Horizons. But that change also brought a change in the afternoon part of the run, and route 105 now runs it, and for some weird reason, we don't really have a main driver for that route, which may potentially mean lots of different drivers and different buses, which'll be interesting, because I love it when I get to ride a different bus than normal, especially if it's a newer one. For me, the neighborhood buses are still the same, except for a new intermediate driver that I get to ride with in the afternoons, and she's really nice, which is great to hear, because I keep being reminded myself countless times of the not-so-great times we had on the Horizons bus for most of last year, when route 119 was still running the Horizons routes for Clear Springs, Creekside, and Victory Lakes. If you were a CHECHS student and rode that bus last year, you know who I'm talking about. She wasn't a great bus driver in many ways. She doesn't really drive a bus that well... a little slow (understandable), late in changing lanes, may often times leave the turn signal on, and... yeah. She also once singled an innocent rider out for having bright hair (she was forced to sit up front) and that didn't go well. From the looks of it, that rider *almost* got written up for something out of her control. And when the driver stopped so that the innocent student could be moved, she ended up stopping in an active turn lane, which highly concerned me and the safety of other drivers, not to mention anyone who was possibly waiting behind would get annoyed at the delay. Riding with her was basically a nightmare... and she also drove an older bus that seemed to be nothing but problems, but that was out of her control.

Anyways, this post just goes to show you that a LOT has changed at Horizons in the two years I've been here. I'm just starting my third year here, and it'll be my second to last round at school. And Hurricane Harvey came through and made us lose two weeks of school. It also made several families suffer house/water damage, and some lost everything in it. And for those who suffered any type of damage from the recent Hurricane Harvey, I feel really, really bad for those families. Thankfully, our house wasn't flooded at all, and neither did the other houses in my neighborhood, and we didn't suffer any damage. My family and I are totally OK.

Well, I've typed a lot, and I can't think of much more to talk about, so I should probably wrap this post up. I'm sorry I haven't made a post since January, but.... life keeps me busy on a regular basis. I hope y'all will have an awesome school year. And if you're reading this and you haven't ever talked to me, or have never been friends with me, feel free to come talk to me, especially if you're a freshman. I could use some new friends now that a new year has started, and things are not at all how they used to be. I'm not sure when the next time will be that I'll end up posting another post on this blog, but hopefully it'll be soon, along with me talking about something different! I hope y'all will have an awesome school year with good grades, and all I have to say now is, good luck in school, have fun, and have an awesome day!

Happy New Year! + Friendly advice on how to be happy at Horizons

Sorry, guys! I had meant to post earlier during the break, but got tied up because of holiday matters... On the bright side, social media has told me that most of you seem to be having a great winter break! Unfortunately, it went by so fast, it feels almost like it never happened. But let me tell you, 2016 has honestly been quite a year. There's been a lot of stuff going on, like the recent deaths of well-known people, the presidential election (don't get me started on that one), the good music that was introduced this year, and I'm sure there's a lot more. Writing this blog post is one of the first things I'm doing in 2017, and as this'll be the year that I turn 16 (on February 9), I'm sure there'll be a LOT more interesting things to come this year. We'll have to see what happens, though!

Now a bit about the Horizons family... Let me just start by saying that if you want to be happy at Horizons, you HAVE to make LOTS of friends. Not just a few friends, but a lot of friends, preferably from different grades. I just recently started interacting with some freshman (no, they're not boys), and it started by us saying "hi" to each other in the hallways. Believe it or not, during finals week, we eventually found ourselves in a study room, and that's where we really got to become well-known friends. Actually, I now consider those people my best friends. Honestly, I'm now super glad that I did that before the break began, because guess what? On the last day before break, I found out that TWO of my sophomore best friends are leaving CHECHS (one got kicked out, and one dropped out), and since I have known those two best friends for a while, it made me really sad. They really made a huge difference in what happens in our classrooms.

As soon as I found that fact out, I figured that this might be the last time I will ever see them again in person unless they do something about it... so I, by default, decided to spend my last few hours with those two. I wasn't told to leave, so I knew they wanted me there (after all, we're still friends!). We walk to the winter celebration roundup, and watched quite a few interesting things happen onstage. (We even moved away to a different spot as soon as a LARGE group of teenage freshman get seated next to us.) I became a little uneasy, but thankfully, the friend group I was following did the same thing I wanted to do, and that was move to a different spot. As I was doing that, one of the teenage boys sitting right next to me (note: I said no words to him whatsoever) said "Aw, I was just getting to know you!" Since I knew my best friends were leaving, it gave me an immediate excuse to say to him, and I believe that was something like "I need to sit with some of my best friends who are leaving us."

Once winter celebration ended, we headed back to our advisory classroom, and that's where we said our final words in person to our best friends. I can't count the number of times I stressed to them "I am legitimately going to miss you two" and "It won't ever be the same without you guys!", because I feel like I said it quite a few times. I even told them that if they need any kind of support at all, or if they just want to talk to me, they know where to find me on social media. Nonetheless, some of us played a few rounds of hangman, and they were Christmas-themed. Man, was that a blast. We even had a final small talk with our teacher, because I know the two of them will deeply miss him.

When advisory finally ended, I knew it was time for the big moment. I had about 25 more minutes to be with them before I had to go to the buses, so I followed them to the Student Center and told one of them "Do whatever you want to do with me now, as you might not be able to do that later!" Ten minutes in, one of them says she's leaving, and thus the sadness begins. The final words are said. After all of that, she then leaves. But hey, I got about 12-15 minutes to spend with this other best friend before she leaves us, so I do that. She's now saying her final goodbyes to anyone she likes as a friend, with me following her (because I'm such a nice friend.) I knew she was totally going to need my support, as she was in my advisory class, and since she won't have anything electronic to communicate with (not even her school laptop, as that's a sad part of changing schools, plus her phone was taken quite a while ago), she'll be almost entirely disconnected from the media for about two weeks.

After finding nobody else she wanted to say a final goodbye to, the two of us head back to our advisory and geometry classroom, and we have a good final goodbye talk there. Even the teacher totally agrees that it won't be the same without her. My best friend told me how she does the entire "annoy the teacher the friendly way" deal, and tells me I should probably do it, as that's how the entire classroom gets engaged the fun way in the first place. I still don't think it'll work out the same way without the entire group there, though, as we all had the power to do it together, with each one of us having our OWN special ability, and trying to take over a different one is an entirely different story. I still think it'll be interesting to see how these future classroom meetings play out, though. But for now, sadness arises as I realize that I'm finally having to leave my best friend, as if I'm not on the bus in the next few minutes, I'm stuck here until I get picked up. Yes, I was very sad that I had to leave her, and that it wasn't the other way around... but things had to be how they had to be, and that really hurt my heart for a few seconds. How I didn't cry during any part of this, I don't know.

Even though I literally just wrote a sad story, my point is that friends at an early college high school like Clear Horizons probably won't last forever, so it's probably wise to makes lots of friends and several best friends, preferably in several different grade levels. That way, if someone gets kicked out, or if they dropped out (like in my case, two best friends had gotten kicked/dropped out), you can still interact with more friends, and also have some best friends! That way, you don't have to be an entirely sad sack. I also want to tell you that this applies to administrative staff members as well, such as your principal, assistant principal, teachers, bus drivers, etc. I wanted to say that additional point because on my Horizons bus route (route 119), we got a different bus driver to replace our driver (who is now a substitute bus driver). The only reason that was sad for the riders riding that bus was because our students loved that bus driver. She was very calm, very lenient, drove this same route for 9 years, I managed to make good friends with her, and she drove quite a nice bus (it was a 2010 Thomas C2). Now, we have a bus driver who says next to nothing, and now the riders feel a bit indifferent about this bus driver. On top of all that, her bus is just a normal older bus (a 2005 IC CE powered by a CNG engine). I'm pretty sure the older buses ran on diesel the first few years they were running, because their odometer readings are a little low to have been used on CNG their entire lifetime (this year, I've seen them anywhere from about 48,000-73,000 miles). Either way, both buses have A/C, but the older bus doesn't have as good A/C as the newer ones. Go figure.

I know I just wrote quite a lot about various topics, but 2016 has been such a wild year! I also wanted to get some of these stories off of my mind and hopefully be able to start a fresh 2017 having done what I've been wanting to do forever, and that is to write this blog post. With that being said, I'm going to go ahead any say that's all for now. I hope you can forgive me in being late writing my own blog posts, and I hope you have a great and wonderful 2017!

See some of y'all on Tuesday!