Over the past four years, I’ve learned a lot that you won’t find in any standardized school curriculum. The most valuable lessons that I’ll take away from Garfield are the ones that I learned in the hallways, not classrooms, and without help from teachers.

How to laugh at myself

This could just be a facet of my personality or high school in general, but I seem to attract awkwardness on the regular. Let’s take a trip down memory lane to approximately 14 months ago: sitting in second period, Colleen Gilligan asks me why I’m wearing two different shoes. My first reaction was that she was cray-cray, but looking down I realized that I’d somehow managed to put a weird sparkly sneaker thing on my left foot and a black and white flowered flat on the other. For the rest of the day I tried to shuffle down the hall so that anyone passing me could only see one shoe at a time, but I eventually embraced my own ridiculous awkwardness.

How to make new friends

I’ve ended up with pretty eclectic (read: strange) groups of people in my classes (shout out to second period ceramics) so I’ve learned how to connect with a lot of different people. Maybe it’s just me, but there is something incredibly gratifying about walking down the halls and being able to smile at nearly everyone I see. Plus, it’s kind of like having a collection of something. Except it’s a collection of people so it sounds weirder when I put it like that.

How to suck up to people

I probably wouldn’t need this skill if lazy teachers didn’t exist, but since there’s a substantial number of fine educators at Garfield who like to grade based on their impression of you and their mood I’ve honed my flattery skills quite nicely. I’m slightly proud and slightly embarrassed to say that a nice little chunk of my GPA has been earned on polite small talk and the occasional baked good. Don’t antagonize your teachers! You can sweet talk your way to anything if you try hard enough.

How to be proud of anything

The Garfield I got to know as a freshman was decrepit and old. Bricks in the breezeway fell on kids; the nonsensical annex actually existed; everything was faintly musty. We scoffed at the bland, institutional halls of Ballard and the Eastside schools. We flaunted the football team’s terrible record. We played our best volleyball in the layer of dust on the gym floor. Even though outsiders saw these as our flaws, we saw them as our flavor. At the Old Garfield, everything was source a pride.

How to stand up to people

On a scale from zero to intimidating, I rank pretty low. But no thank you, I don’t want to be your doormat. Garfield has taught me that if I ask for respect, I can get. Even the monstrously tall guys who stand in big scary clumps move and apologize when I say excuse me. It still takes a lot of gumption, but I’ve learned to demand apologies when people hit me with clay or shove me in the halls.