It was the first day of my sophomore year, and I had felt socially unfulfilled as that first day ended, so I took a chance and struck up a conversation with a guy I vaguely knew in my math 7 class in middle school. It was a small chance like that that led me to everyone I’m friends with as I close out my high school career. Almost every impactful relationship with anybody that I’ve known throughout high school can be traced back to that one day, that one class, and that one chance I took. 

Even enrolling in journalism was a random chance I took. In all honesty, I was planning on taking gourmet foods and was only persuaded by my mom to take journalism with the promise of being able to spend more of my life on my Xbox. I agreed and was introduced into the single most individuality-driven classroom I’ve ever stepped foot in. From that point onward, it was a monthly album review matched with a school board meeting recap. It showed me a sense of balance and gave me opportunities to dive outside of my comfort zone and take chances on the pieces I wrote. 

Chance after chance, I learned to just run blindly and not turn back. In hindsight, this mindset may have led me to some less-than-ideal situations and consequences throughout the years, but I wouldn’t trade it for the positive things it instilled in me. To not dwell on a bad grade, to just pick myself back up and keep running, to try again in every possible way until I could reach my desired result. To never settle for less than what was going to satisfy me. A simple chance in my sophomore class registration left me with an unquenchable thirst for experience and satisfaction, and the energy to never stop until I reach my goals. 

To any future journalism student reading this, you may not know MKG(B) as much as the past classes did, and you definitely don’t know Mr. Kim, the previous economics teacher, but that’s not the point. The point is to find those teachers that you’d want to recognize as so influential to you they’ve shaped who you are as a person, and have left you with such important lessons you’d go to a different high school 30 minutes away at 9 a.m. just to experience their teaching one last time before high school is over. Those are the classes you don’t want to skip, and even if you do, try to make it up to them eventually.