It was a cold day in December, luckily I am home all cozy in my pajamas and the heater blasting. I’m sitting in my cozy room, my LED lights on, sitting in my comfy gaming chair with pajamas and a hoodie while playing Grand Theft Auto V. My father is on a business trip in California, my mother at work in the city. I’ve been slacking off in school, I haven’t been attending school for the past two or three weeks. I didn’t know what I was thinking, I was hanging out with the wrong crowd and doing the wrong things. I didn’t realize what I was doing to myself until it was too late… Both of my parents obviously thought I was attending school everyday. Usually the school would call my mother’s phone stating that I was not present for attendance and that I was marked absent. But me being the sneaky high school student I was I blocked the school phone number so my mother wouldn’t receive any of the phone calls. So I’m just playing my game with no stress and all the joy in the world thinking I’m so cool and out of nowhere I see I’m getting a phone call. I pick up the phone and see it’s my mother calling. In my head I say to myself “oh shit”. I decide not to pick up the phone and just let it ring. Then another phone call from mother, and then another, and another, and another. Now I’m really stressing out, my blood pressure spikes and I feel my heart beating out of my chest. The calls stop, but that was short lasted. I get a text from my mother saying “Jonik pick up the phone rn”. At this point I already knew she found out, but how? Maybe a teacher called wondering if everything is okay? Maybe my mother is just wondering if everything is okay? Or maybe my guidance counselor is calling to check up and wondering if everything is alright? Bingo that was the one, my guidance counselor called my mother. So I call my mother, I don’t even try lying, I’m stuttering so hard not knowing what to say. My mother is obviously very unsettled with me, disappointed and angry, I can hear all the emotions in her voice while she’s “talking” to me on the phone. My mother is saying “How could you do this, what have you even been doing for this long at home, how could you lie to me, now I have to go to the school and have a meeting with the principal”. I had nothing to say and my mother wants an answer but I don’t have a reasonable answer to give her. I mean come on, what answer can you possible give to your mother in this situation. Fortunately, I’ll only get scolded by mother because my father was on a business trip in California, but that only means I’m going to have to deal with him later. My mother usually gets home at 5:00 from work. At the time my mother called it was in the afternoon, so somewhere around 12:00 P.M. So now I had five hours to kill, not knowing what to do with myself. It was probably the slowest time has ever went for me. I was frozen for 5 hours waiting for my mother to get home. I would go from playing games to stress eating to making up assignments on Google Classroom, and so on. Fast forward to 5:00 P.M, my mother gets home, I immediately come to her when she comes in and obviously am sucking up to her, helping her with bags, etc. She washes her hands and unpacks her bag. Then tells me to come into the dining table, where we both sit down. I can’t even describe the amount of emotions and all the thoughts running through my head. I bet she was thinking how could my son do this? So she starts asking me what I have been doing all day, your guidance counselor is very shocked how you could do this, she thought something was wrong at home and you weren’t in the right state of mind. Just going off on me which I now understand. If I put myself into her shoes I would do the exact same thing, there is no excuse for someone skipping school for that long. She tells me that now she has setup a meeting with my guidance counselor in order to discuss grades and how to fall back. I was very apologetic and I really understood how my actions could’ve caused way worse consequences. My mother sitting me down and talking to me is the best possible thing that could’ve happened. I could’ve been suspended, expelled, who knows what! So I go back to school the next day, it was a Friday. Thank god it was a Friday! In order to enter the school you have to have your I.D so you can swipe in. So when I swiped in there was a hold on my I.D. I said to myself, “welp here we start”. Two minutes later my guidance counselor comes and gets me. Keep in mind, my guidance counselor is amazing, she will always work with you, help you out, and stick up for your as long as you respect her and keep your promises. We go to her office and we sit down. I confirm with her that everything was okay and I was being an idiot, I lost myself, and I guess I needed someone to push me back onto the right path. So we discuss what I’m going to say to my teachers when I go up to class. Obviously, I can’t just say to my teachers that I have been ditching school because well that wouldn’t look to good on me. So Ms.Lau, my guidance counselor tells me to say that I’ve been on vacation for a family reunion. She sends me out of her office and tells me that she’ll be closely monitoring my attendance and will be in contact with my parents if she sees me screw up. This was a huge learning lesson for me, I’m grateful that I had a guidance counselor who cared about her students and parents that didn’t absolutely flip shit. I learned that I was hanging out with the wrong crowd and needed to surround myself around people who cared about their lives and keeping themselves on the right track. Because of my guidance counselor I was able to learn that education is important for you and that if you choose to slack off normally there will be no one there forcing you to go, it’s all your choice. It’s your choice whether you want to be educated.