Memories of a Freshmen Year

The following has been copied and paste from a facebook note I recently wrote. I suppose it’s more of a personal post then I usually put on my blog, but hopefully you will enjoy reading it. 

I am now trudging through my sophomore year of high school. It’s been a pretty good run thus far… but sometimes I really miss (or at the very least, laugh at) my freshmen year. It was a year when we had hard, new classes, challenging, yet funny teachers, and awesome friends.

Ninth grade was my both first and last year having Mr Menikoff as a teacher. That man had such a honest personality accompanied by a very dry sense of humor. 

It was my first real year having Mr. Goad. I had him for half a year of logic and all of latin I. But neither of those could be considered really Goad classes as compared to last year’s history’s class. I will never forget (and unfortunately, I doubt any of my friends will either) when at the end of the year’s first test I walked out of the class room saying, “That really wasn’t that hard!” He made sure that no one ever said that again of his class.

I really miss Austin Hammonds. Last year was his second and last year at DSCS. If I could describe him in one word, it would be a listener. Sometimes I would call him and he would listen to me blather on forever about tests, teachers, girls, and whatever else. Then he would often answer me with something as profound as, “Man, you’re stupid” or some variation of that. But if I was really lucky, I would get one of his awesome analogies summarizing life and how simple it is and how I make it much too complicated. 

The last (but most definitely not least) thing that I miss is Mr. Bartlett and his awesome speech and debate class. It is probably my favorite class ever. Well, everyone did hate it hate the beginning of the year when we tried to prepare for a debate on the topic that every other school in the country was doing. That lasted for several weeks, until Mr. Bartlett realized we were no good at it. That’s when the fun began. We started having awesome theological debates every two weeks. 

The first was Angela and I against Austin and Alex. We debated wether or not a person could loose his or her faith. The right team won. If you ask the loosing team, they’ll spread propaganda saying that we cheated or something. We won. 

The next debate I remember was the one with Angel and I against Laurelen and Laura. The topic was whether or not baptism is necessary for a person’s salvation. This topic was decided before Christmas break so we would have around a month to prepare for it. However, I learned that my partner, Angel, was not coming back to DSCS after the break. Mr. Bartlett gave me the choice of either being given a new partner or going it alone. I, of course, decided to debate the girls by myself. I won. Now, they may try to tell you that it was a tie or something, but I won. 

I was also in a debate with Laurelen in which we argued a case for capitol punishment. Quite unfortunately, however, there were two things working against us. First of all, because of the number of students and the turns that we were taking, we somehow ended up going against the teacher. Mr. Bartlett was a master at that stuff …and let’s just say that we died. The second thing working against us was the fact that Laurelen was still emo and this somewhat hindered our preparation against a master debater.

The last debate of the year was on the topic of whether of not it would have been ethical for a Christian to fight against Britain in the American Revolution. I don’t remember many good moments from this one. Every student in the class was included since it was the last debate of the year. It was Alex, Angela, and I against Laura, Laurelen, and Austin. It was very entertaining to learn that Angela did not know what the American Revolution was (“I mean, I knew America was free, but…”).

There were many other random things that I won’t forget such as wether or not you eat the gristles on the chicken, what it really means to blow your nose, caramel, where the mud-vain is, how much I hate crawfish, where the point of actuality is, and much more. For better or for worse, ninth grade was quite a memorable year.