From the first steps taken onto a yellow school bus to the final steps up to the stage to receive a diploma, the journey of a student is marked by a familiar, yet unique set of ups and downs. There may be graduates who look back on elementary school as their peak, while another set of classmates may choose middle or high school instead.
Senior Aneesha Sampath said that high school has been her best experience, while middle school comes in at a close second place. “It is a little hard to choose between the two,” Sampath said. “High school is fun and I’ve had a lot of freedom, while in middle school, life was more restrictive, but I did have less work.”
Sampath has more sentiment for her time here over her time at Frost, elaborating on how much she favors the environment she has been in the past four years. “When I try to determine the absolute best class I’ve taken at Wootton, I can’t because there are too many to pick from,” Sampath said. “I think of orchestra, math, physics and programming off the top of my head, but I could definitely keep going.”
Graduating in 1990 from Chapel Hill High School in North Carolina, science teacher Jake Buxton has great memories of his high school and elementary school days, while he remembers being a somewhat uncomfortable middle schooler. “Back in sixth grade, I was super young-looking and small in comparison to my classmates,” Buxton said. “I got the question ‘How old are you, dude?’ a lot, which is why I tell my kids to try not to care what other people think.”
Even so, Buxton has a generally positive outlook on all the time he spent at school. He feels that his time in high school edges out to be the winning experience, although he is concerned about the overall enjoyment of students currently going through that phase, specifically related to technology usage. “Nowadays, I think high school would still be more fun and relaxing without kids relying so much on their phones,” Buxton said.
When senior Richard Qiao thinks about all his school experiences, he concludes that he has preferred his learning process the most in elementary school, his classmates the most in middle school and his teachers the most in high school. “I did enjoy learning the most around first or second grade, but my favorite class of all time is physics with big daddy Dr. Hirsch,” Qiao said.
The most common answer to which period of schooling is best appears to be high school. As a whole though, students may become thankful for every instance of learning in life they have had, whether they tend to smile or cringe at the memory. “Throughout everything I’ve been through in public school, I feel like I’ve come very far where I once was,” Qiao said. “Now I guess it’s time for me to start thinking about the future will hold for me.”