This Year by Sarah West

The end of the school year has come so much faster than I have realized, and upon realizing how close we are, spring fever has really begun to kick in. Yet no matter how excited I am to run out of the dim dark hallways into the open heat and beauty of summer vacation after (hopefully) confidently turning in my math final on that dreaded last Monday, I can't help but reflect on what a positive year I've had, and how maybe I shouldn't be wishing to end it so quickly. I have throughly enjoyed and benefitted from every single one of the classes I took in my sophomore year, except maybe gym. I have yet to find the benefit in running around aimlessly, playing sports not everyone enjoys, and being stuck on teams with overly competitive classmates who dominate the game, especially when I have learned more about health and fitness in one week of my anatomy class than in all 10 years I have been forced to take gym class. But besides that one period that never fails to dampen my day, I have had the best teachers and classes I could possibly imagine.

I have never been more genuinely interested in the material I have learned in class than I was in AP Biology and Human Body Systems this year. We did so many cool labs and experiments, including dropping a mixture of ATP and sodium ions onto a rabbit muscle fiber and watching it contract and using the knee-jerk reflex to roughly calculate the speed our nerves send, process and receive signals. I now know how the very smallest molecules in my body work and are constructed, and I just can't help but be amazed at the complexity of it all. I even got to brush up on my art skills by sculpting different body systems and organs on a skeleton mannequin throughout the year.

History was enjoyable this year for the first time since elementary school. Though this was mostly due to the teacher, I laughed, looked forward to the class everyday (except maybe test days) and as a result I was definitely more motivated to study and improve in the class. English, though it has never been an easy class for me by any means, has also been a subject area in which I feel I have improved immensely. I am not sure if it was the monthly blog posts, or just the many essays we have written throughout the year, but it just feels so much easier to write, especially compared to how uncomfortable I felt writing last year. That class also provided me with my first experience with a student teacher, which is something that will definitely be in my memory for a long time in the future.

I've had such a great year, thats the prospect of junior year, with its fair share of AP classes, mixed reviews of teachers and the pressure of the upcoming search for colleges seems just plain terrifying. We all know summer vacation is over in the blink of an eye, and is usually dampened by a decent amount of summer work, and soon enough we will all be back to do it all again. There is no telling what that next year will bring in terms of my workload, teachers, tests and experiences, but life is going to keep moving forward and whether we like it or not, we are all going to be moving forward as well, to hopefully an amazing, memorable, and engaging junior year of high school.