“Honestly, the high school experience I would say for the most part, was pretty good. I had a pretty rough freshman year, I was homeschooled, kind of by choice but also impacted by the pandemic. It was a hard start because I wanted to have that typical freshman year experience and I didn’t really get to have that. Then, from sophomore to junior year, I switched schools, which was a rough transition. But once I got my feet on the ground, I was able to have a better high school experience. I went to a private school and then I switched to Four Corners Upper School. So, it was a very different experience…a similar but different experience and when I first came to Four Corners, it was really hard for me to find a community to be involved in and to start making friends. I kind of relied on volleyball to make all my friends. Moving schools has definitely changed me the most because before I was kind of shy and reserved to myself, but I saw coming to a new school as an opportunity to really bring out the best of myself. I’m very proud of myself for where I am today in this school. I’ve made a lot of really good friends and I’ve met some really great people at this school and once I got myself out there everyone was really welcoming to me.
This year I’ve really thrown myself into a lot of activities and last year I setup myself to be in a lot of leadership positions I really enjoyed doing and I even won homecoming queen this year which was something I never thought would happen in a million years. I’m most proud of all the accomplishments that I’ve had in extracurricular and academic activities. I really pushed myself to take a lot of AICE classes and do some dual enrollment here and there while managing to keep straight A’s my whole time throughout high school. So, I’m really proud of myself for doing that while balancing having a part time job, being involved in the clubs that I have like Volleyball, Student Council, National Honor Society, and Yearbook. So, I think I’m just very proud of myself for getting involved in a lot of things while also keeping good grades and having a job and bouncing, having a social life. Out of all my extracurricular activities, yearbook would have to be my favorite because it’s only my second year in yearbook. There are so many elements of your book like design, photography, journalism, and I really like all of those like how yearbook gets to bring all that together. And it’s definitely like a very unique group of people and it’s all very broad. It just brings together a bunch of different people into one place where everybody likes doing the same things and it also has business and marketing aspects to it, which I really enjoy. I want to start a business in the future one day, so I see myself using the marketing and business aspects that I’ve learned in yearbook as well as just the basic journalism and photography skills. Because I have started taking photos outside of school and doing some journalism sort of academic, creative writing.” Senior Julianna Pandolfi said.
To the current underclassmen, one thing that I would advise you is to involve yourself in school activities and keep your grades up. Being a part of the community that’s at school, I honestly regret waiting until my junior year to become more involved. Go to the school events, and just enjoy your time in high school because it goes by so fast. Don’t take any opportunities for granted because we will only be this young once,” Senior Julianna Pandolfi said.
