New Kid Narrative

Even in a room full of people, I felt alone. When I was a sophomore, I moved from the East coast, to the South. With a time zone in between my old life and my new one, I knew this transition would not be an easy one. On the first of school, fight or flight instincts kicked in and I wanted to run away. Coming from a school of one thousand students to one quadruple the size was frightening. Walking through the halls, I desperately searched through the sea of faces trying to find a familiar one. Convinced that somehow everyone would know I was “the new kid” I hoped that a student would step forward and introduce himself. As I quickly came to figure out, in a school of four thousand students, anyone could be a new kid. In the first few days, a couple students asked if I was new,

Lunch time became a daily obstacle, as the odds of finding someone you know with same lunch were slim. Making an effort to try and establish a group to sit with, one day I approached a group of girls. Trying to seem confident I asked, “can I sit here?” when in reality I feared nothing more than rejection. I continued to sit with that group of girls for a few weeks, until my company began to feel unwelcomed. Between side glances that seemed to say “why is she still here?” and fake smiles at my attempts to make a joke, I gathered my broken sense of dignity, and left. Frustrated that I had let the opinions of a few girls make me feel inferior, I created a new game plan. Slowly, I changed my approach on making new friends, by appearing more open minded and willing. Realizing that starting off my introduction with a characteristic that automatically categorizes myself from others, I began to say just say “yes, I’m new.” Overtime, people began to react differently, as I started to