It was a cold day in December, luckily I am home all alone, cozy in my pajamas, the heater blasting. I’m sitting in room with the LED lights on, in a very comfortable gaming chair. I had pajamas and a hoodie on while playing Grand Theft Auto V on my gaming computer. Both my parents are outside of the house. My dad on a business trip in California and my mother working in the Metro Tech area. It was my freshman year in high school, I was attending James Madison High School. When most parents leave their kid at home, they expect them to do what’s done right? Well, I wasn’t on the right path, I wasn’t even on a path. More like a steep rocky descent. I was cutting school for around 2-3 weeks. Why was I cutting school? I received a new schedule and I didn’t like it, new people, new school, didn’t have any people I knew in my classes. In addition to that I was hanging around with the wrong group of people. I thought it was cool to skip class, not go to school, and all that other dumb stuff. I was quite literally doing nothing everyday. I would just be playing games, eating, playing games, and eating. “People saying nothing is impossible, but I do nothing everyday” said A. A. Milne. This is quite literally what I was doing. I feel like everyone has felt this way at one point or another, that school was useless, what are these teachers teaching us, why? At least this is what I thought and it wasn’t a very healthy way of thinking.

So there I was playing Grand Theft Auto V doing nothing. Doing nothing until I see my phone is ringing, someone’s calling me. I glance at my phone to check who’s calling me. I thought it was a friend because why would my parents be calling me if they know I’m in “school”. I look and it’s my mother calling me. At first I don’t think anything of it, maybe my mother wants me to get something at the store on my way home from school. There’s no way she could’ve figured out that I’ve been cutting school for the past almost month. So I ignore the phone call, because why would I answer, after all I am in “class”. Just as I thought I’m chilling, I get another phone call from my mother and another, another, and another. Now this is where my heart starts racing and my body starts to heat up. My mother keeps ringing me and I’m not answering. I have no lie and there’s no way I’m going to admit guilt, I’m always going to find a way out! Even though I might’ve thought so it wasn’t this time that I was getting out of anything. I get a text from my mother saying “Jonik pick up the phone right now!”. Now I know I was doomed. I can basically hear her voice in my head, imagining all the yelling in my head. My mother calls me and this time I do pick up! My mother immediately starts talking in an angry and loud voice “How could you do this, what have you even been doing for this long at home, how could you lie to me? You are causing me so many problems now I have to go make time and make an appointment with your guidance counselor and principal because of your actions!” Who thought doing nothing could you get in trouble right haha! Now I didn’t have to start thinking how my mother figured out I was skipping school. All I knew is that was going to be a long day until my mother came home from work which was usually around 5:00-5:30 P.M. What turned from a nice and relaxed day at home all by myself, turned into my nerves bouncing around until my mother got home. I started making up assignments, cleaning the house, doing the laundry, trying to have my mother in the best mood as possible when she got home. Even though I knew I was doomed either way. It was probably the longest 4-5 hours of my life. My mother comes home and immediately orders me to the hallway. I come out of my room and run to her not knowing what to say. I’m frozen, it’s like I just fell into an ice bath. My mother starts telling me how my guidance counselor thought something was wrong with me and how this could’ve been a much worse situation if she didn’t get a hold of my mother or father. She’s telling me how much stress I caused her and I felt so guilty,  I didn’t even bother trying to lie or apologize because that would just make things worse. This is where actions would speak louder than words in a sense. I knew I lost my parents trust and I couldn’t do anything about it.

Fast forward to the next day. It’s a cloudy, cold, mushy day. I’m on my way to school ready to face the consequences. So I arrive at school obviously early, wanted to get out of the house so I wouldn’t have to run into my mother. So to enter the school you would need a school I.D to swipe in the school, it confirms that you attend this high school, what time you swiped into the building, etc. So I swipe in with my I.D and the computer starts ringing. The person at the computer tells me to go through the metal detectors and to come back around and wait with them. I think to myself, welp here we go “7:40 in the morning and I have my first altercation.” My guidance counselor Ms.Lau comes and gets me and escorts me to her office. We sit down her office and get right to talking. She starts asking me questions if everything was okay with me, why I decided to skip school, and so on. My response was straight up, I was being stupid and not thinking about what I was doing to myself and my future. She tells me how things could’ve escalated and been much worse but she was here to work with me. Which I greatly appreciated, she was definitely the best guidance counselor we had in our school. She told me to not tell the teachers that I’ve been cutting school and to tell them that I was on vacation and that she would help me out with the teachers on making up work and getting back on track. I got a conduct sheet and my teachers had to sign it, showing proof that I was in every single class, everyday for a month. And I was fine with that, it was fair. Ms.Lau told me how I needed to get myself on the right path and that might mean distancing myself from the friends I previously had. I agreed, she taught me how school was important and even if I didn’t believe in it, it was mandatory. She told me how she was exactly the same in high school and how she also learned that education is important and will help you succeed. Ms.Lau taught me a very valuable lesson, from her I learned and I fixed my bad habits. That’s why you mistakes though, to learn from them and to improve, not to make them again.