Day 5 Kyles Question- Megan Schaus

In high school, I was the exact person I am not. I tried to be someone I knew I wasn't. My group of friends that I had for all four years, brought out the complete worst in me. After fourteen years of hearing about high school as a "scary" and "mean" place, I realized we were the people responsible for making it that way. After awhile it got so bad, it came to a point where we weren't even noticing how mean we were being to the people around us. We were only nice to our group of friends. We would go out of our way to give someone else a hard time. It was bullying, and I knew it wasn't okay. High school changed me. I remember one day one of the girls in the group slapped a girl in our math class for interuptting her. I went home and cried myself to sleep. I considered myself apart of this group because they were all I have ever known. Each year, they got worse. Senior year, they made a boy transfer high schools that had a full ride scholarship. At graduation I had kids coming up to me saying I they knew I wasn't really like them. They said they knew I was so much better than that, and I was. I apologized to each kid I was mean too. I was devastated for being apart of what my "friends" have done. One positive is I ended up graduating high school with many strong relationships. One negative is I missed out knowing great people that I could have become great friend with. This experience has taught me not to judge others, just like Mark didn't judge the inmates. If he had, he would have missed out on getting to know some talented kids.