Your senior year in high school should be the best of all the years you have spent in school. It’s where you prepare yourself for college, go to prom, and reminisce over your childhood memories.
For me, my senior year will be different. I moved from Elizabeth, New Jersey to Cherry Hill over the past summer. Even though I  wanted to move out of Northern Jersey and finally go somewhere new, the “what-ifs” still roamed my head. I admit I was a little skeptical about the whole thing. I was leaving my friends, moving to a new neighborhood, and would be attending a new school. I was scared. But it was time for a change.
My family bought our first house here in Cherry Hill. For me it was one of the greatest accomplishments we achieved as a family. Looking for the right house took us nearly the entire summer. Luckily, at the last minute we found our dream home.
Summer came to an end and the school year started. Around two years ago, my mother  became very ill. She had gone through five major back surgeries, and with this I was forced to drop out of school. I have four younger siblings I had to care for, and my mother as well. She couldn’t get around the house alone nor could she cook or clean. It was a hard time for my family. It put me behind in school, and coming to a new school I was scared the credit system would be different and I would not graduate in 2013.
Usually starting school a little later than everyone else, you would assume everyone would be settled in. Arriving at West I saw I was not the only one going through change. There was a recent change in the school schedule, and students were just as lost as I was.
An advantage West has over my old school is the length of a school day. In my old school, we followed a 10-period schedule which started at 7:30a.m and ended at 4 p.m. which was a lot to handle especially for students who were involved in extracurricular activities.
Cherry Hill West is a really big school with lots of students. I love how everyone is different in his or her own way. Students are more active, and part of different clubs and sports. The teachers are inspiring and extremely helpful, and I have a guidance counselor who is beyond supportive.
I may not know the overwhelming majority of the school, or how most things work around here, but what I do know is that here I’m given opportunities that were never given to me before, and I’m more than ecstatic to be graduating with the Class of 2013 here at West.
It is obvious life never goes as planned. Something always comes up in our journey through life which always throws us off track. I’ve learned that instead of denying change, you must go along with it. I’m still getting to know my way around and also the new faces that come with it, but it’s a challenge I’m willing to face.