A few weeks ago I opened a letter I wrote five years ago addressed to myself, It was short, detailing that specific day, what was going on in my life at that particular moment and most importantly, listed different questions I had for myself and things I had hoped to have achieved before graduating high school. I asked about my experiences, if high school had lived up to what I had imagined it would be, and a plethora of other questions, one of them more or less asking If I could, what advice would I give myself before stepping foot into WJ. After a quick existential crisis over the fact that I didn’t have a finite piece of advice I would give anyone before entering high school, I’ve narrowed it down to simply what made me the happiest and brought me the most fulfillment which just so happens to include Pitch.
My Pitch story isn’t that exciting, I’d already known that I’d wanted to be a part of the school’s newspaper in some way before I entered WJ, but stepping into 193 during freshman orientation and meeting Mrs. Borrelli and other future pitches cemented the fact that Pitch wouldn’t just be a class that I attended but a constant I had throughout high school. I have Pitch to thank for being one of the few places that I could truly count on.
I’ve thought long and hard about if i’ve gained anything monumental from my own particular high school experience, aside from the obvious academic growth and I’ve come to the conclusion that the people and relationships that I’ve formed, and the lessons that I’ve learned from them is one of my, if not the biggest takeaway from high school. The last four years included some of the hardest experiences that I’ve ever had go through and I don’t think I would have made it though the way I did without the people I met through Pitch or other the communities that I’ve been a part of like the Minority Scholars Program or the Black Student Union. I don’t think I would’ve grown out of the almost unbreakable shell I’d concocted around myself in my earlier high school days if it wasn’t for these different relationships and the confidence I’d gained from them.
To answer the question I asked myself in 7th grade, there isn’t a singular piece of advice I would give little me before entering the walls of WJ, or anything I wished I would’ve done differently (besides a few particular classes) other than just doing what satisfied me the most and growing from that.
Lastly, I wanted to end my reflection with a thank you to Mrs. Borrelli who has always been a person I could rely on from the very first time I met her during my freshman orientation, until now, and she single handedly changed the way I thought my life during and after high school would shape out to be.