Vacation is usually over just before school starts, and three years ago, I embarked on my journey as a high school student at McCutcheon High School. As a student at McCutcheon, many things in my life have changed. My social life has increased slightly. I have a lot more homework, but all of that is almost over now until I get to college.

I've taken four years of summer school. The first two I took for a quicker and less strenuous Physical Education class. The next was a semester of US History taught by Mr. Henry, and contrary to his World History class, he did teach-everyday in fact. This past summer I took Government class lead by Mrs. Sanson, which was scarcely easier than what I hear of its difficulty during the school year, but it kept me busy during the summer.

While a freshman, I had only one really easy class: Choir. My other classes were Geometry, Earth and Space Science, English, French I, World History, and Student Success Skills. Mr. Henry taught World History, but mostly he sat at his desk playing Tetris after he told us to "read this chapter," "do these worksheets," "watch this movie," "take this test," etc. About three times a month he made us take notes, and got mad at people who didn't write when they were supposed to. I don't think he graded anything but the tests because of his addiction to Tetris.

I began some more interesting classes my sophomore year. Computer Keyboarding and Computer Applications were easy and useful classes. Before this, I was not very good at typing at all; now I can type without looking at the keyboard, but I still make many mistakes. About the only thing Computer Applications taught me was the use of Microsoft Access and how to use formulas in Excel, so it was a pretty easy class. This sophomore year I was able to avoid taking any social studies classes, but rather was forced into taking Speech class. Speech was not as bad as I thought it would be after finishing the first or second speech, but I still don't enjoy giving presentations.

Allen Bol

My junior year was the one I got to take my first computer programming class: Visual Basic, taught by Mr. Bates. I was the only person to get an A out of the five of us. The second semester was cancelled because, as the administration called it, a lack of enrolled students. I was able to do the second semester through independent study and received another A. I would have taken C++ this year except for the fact that the lack of enrolled students continued-this time they did not let me take an independent study. I have tried learning C++ by myself, but it is more complex than Visual Basic and I haven't had enough time to commit myself to learning it.

High School has been a very educational and fun period of my life. Though I am sure I have made many mistakes during this time, I think I would like to leave things as they are and learn from these mistakes.