Fitting In at My New School
By Dhvani, age 14, Oman
My life was perfectly fine until I found out that I was no longer going to remain in the same school as I was in. My parents decided to shift me to another school, as they found it better than my previous school.
I wasn't really happy that I was going to go to a new school and leave all my good buds behind, but I was a little happy because I found out that the school was much better than my previous school. I was pretty upset that I was leaving my friends in one of the most boring schools in the city and moving on with a better school which was, like, a million times better. I would have asked my friends to ask their parents to let them join the same school I was going to go to, but I knew that their parents could not afford to send them to that school.
So, my friends decided to choose a certain day when we all would meet and throw me a 'mini good-bye party'. The party actually turned out to be really fun, but at the end of it I couldn't say good-bye to them. It was pretty hard for me to digest that I was leaving a school with the CBSE system and going to an IB school, and I would also have to go through the whole process of making new friends again. Since my new school was an international school I knew that there were going to be kids from different parts of the world, like Americans, Indians, English, Africans, and others. Yeah, I was an Indian, but it sure was going to be hard. I had thoughts in my mind, like, What if the people are racist? It was hard for me to think straight, but I couldn't figure on how much I was going to miss my friends.
Then came the first day of my new school. It was the first week of September. I was really nervous as I knew no one in the school. I entered the school, making sure I was confident enough. I walked through the gate, and there were girls and boys saying hello to me, and they sounded pretty friendly. I got to homeroom, and there were 22 eyes staring at me. My homeroom teacher introduced me to the class and I was appointed 'buddies' to look after me for a week.
The first day turned out to be pretty good. Then came day two, which wasn't really that good, and then day three, which was even worse than day two. I wasn't happy how things were going in my new school, and I missed my old friends a lot.
The next week, I made a couple of friends outside of class, and then eventually we got closer and became good friends. The people in my class got worse day by day, and things in class got worse for me too. When people found out what I was like, they started to make fun of me. I have no idea why, but just because I didn't like shopping like every girl in my class the girls started acting all weird with me and started backstabbing me with people from the grade. I couldn't believe what had happened.
Then came the middle of the year, when I was a bit fed up with people backstabbing me, so I decided to backstab them back with my friends. My friends agreed with what I thought about them because they felt the same way. But the girls in my class found out that I backstabbed them, and it wasn't my friends who told them. It was someone they knew from grade 7 who heard me talk behind their backs and made a big deal about it. I got into a bit fight with the girls from my class. My friends supported me no matter what happened.
In the end we finally got things sorted out, and things have gotten a little better since then, but not that great. But as usual I still hang out with my friends and we enjoy being together. I hope that soon things will get a lot better and the people in my class will like me for who I am.
One thing I will say to a new student who doesn't fit in: "Don't fit in. Stand out!"
