There was me, it was third period history class, around 10 am during 11th grade, I’m waking up from my nap that I just had since I fell asleep late once again. I was looking over at the board, vision blurred and voices slightly muffled due to just waking up, rubbing my eyes I would’ve noticed that class just ended and there was one person there, shaking me awake. It was, who I know considered a good friend of mine named Prince. I thought it was just a nice gesture during the time so I just thanked him and then walked off to my next class, not knowing that later down the line he would end up being one of my closest friends. And not only become a closest friend but, be able to introduce me to a whole group of people I fit in and made school more enjoyable for a 16 year old stressful kid like me.
Due to my laziness during this time, I was slowly falling back on assignments and classes. Always on borderline passing mostly due to sleeping in class and missing a couple of assignments and this definitely was taking a slight toll on me since due to my laziness more work continued to pile up which usually a week before the marking period ends, I’d be stressed to the max due to all the work I needed done in a week or less. Though one day, all of this would change, It was around mid fall so around maybe beginning of November at the start of my third period history class. My history teacher talked to us about how we had a project due and it had to be done with someone else, though my morning self was all droopy and drowsy, his words were going in one ear out the other, my eyelids were slowly becoming heavier the more I tried to stay awake until, I heard a familiar voice as me a question which woke me up a bit. “Would you like to be my partner on this project?”, I blinked a couple of times to regain conscious from my sleepy daydream and looked up at the person who asked me, it was Prince from before, the kid who woke me up. Being the introvert I was, I really didn’t respond with words and just mostly nodded as he sat down next to me and he began to set up the project while I still sat lost in tiredness trying to figure out what the hell was going on and what time it was. Though, Prince did ask me something which caused my brain to spark up some energy for me to wake up to and it was a simple question of “Do you play any video games at home?” I answered the question of course and we began to have a small conversation. It was odd since during that time, I actually felt sort of awake, probably due to the talking of a favorite topic of mine, my interest was peaked which gave me the energy to actually continue the conversation. After leaving the class that day, I felt a bit happy, since I knew at that point I definitely ended up making a new friend.
Me and Prince would talk more and more as the days went by, learning more and more about each other and learning how much stuff we actually had in common. We laughed through things and help each other out on work, and with this I noticed a significant increase in my grades due to the help that he would give me during this time. Our friendship went all the way to the next year as well, in 12th grade where we had the same history class once again. We sat next to each other due to already knowing each other and just talked and rambled about stuff we liked while we worked. As months passed, my stress from last year came to haunt me again, I was an IB student so work began to get harder and harder and I began to slow down. I ended up going back to my old ways of sleeping in class and even starting to come in late and skip classes due to the stress that IB work was giving me. This stress felt twice as worse as the one from 11th grade and I felt like I was definitely going to fail the 12th grade entirely and not graduate. Prince noticed this and decided to help me out. This was when he introduced me to who I now consider my main friend group. Once I joined them, it felt like the stress on my shoulders was lifted and was replaced with joy and happiness. My best memory of this is when Prince and another person in the group called Juan invited me to join their tabletop game club and introduced me to games like Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. I chose this memory specifically cause it didn’t only help me relieve stress after a long day of school during Thursdays but, it also opened up my eyes to a new hobby that I ended up acquiring which was collecting and playing Magic: The Gathering cards. With the club and plus the friend group hyping me up everyday, always giving me motivation and always giving me laughs, it was able to help me get through my school days and I would actually try to do work and such due to the energy I was given. Prince, Juan and everyone else in that friend group gave me the motivation and energy to want to get up every morning and 7 am and want to go to school, since I knew I had some good friends waiting for me who were going to help me get through the last year of high school leap together. And with them, I was able to pass the 12th grade and graduate with some high numbers for my grades and left that high school with friends I wanted to be around. And now comes today where, I still talk to them and we still hang out even if it’s just through some discord call and playing video games.
