San Domenico

Like most members of society, the person I see in the mirror every morning is far removed from the person I saw a year ago, a month ago, and even a week ago. Who I am is constantly growing and changing. I cannot tell every detail about who I will become as I progress through my life. What I can say with certainty is the person I am today is very different from the girl who transferred out of The Marin School her Freshman year, only to discover that it was exactly the place she needed to be. The journey was by no means easy – whose is? – but the discovery of who I was, who I needed to be, and what could make of myself was life-changing.
After experiencing a large, multicultural public middle school, I made the decision to explore a new educational experience. My freshman year of high school, I started at a unique school, very different from any education I had ever encountered. To say it was a culture shock would have been a huge understatement. Baffled by this new environment, I rebelled. I cut myself off from all of the enriching opportunities The Marin School could offer me and focused only on the perceived limitations. I wanted to leave as quickly as I could. I got my wish. At the beginning of my sophomore year, I found myself sitting down in new classrooms, dressed in uniform, and surrounded by girls I had never met before. I was positive everything would fall into place.
Unfortunately, I was quick to learn that San Domenico didn’t offer the academic experience I was looking for either. I was functioning in the typical high school setting depicted in a wide range of media outlets, but it wasn’t satisfying my craving for intellectual and social belonging. I wasn’t happy. It was becoming increasingly clear that the school that would be best for me was going to be the school that I threw myself into whole-heartedly. By the start of the next semester, I was again walking the halls of The Marin School, only this time with a new perspective. I dove in. I got involved in soccer, Student Counsel, and Yearbook. I took a Junior/Senior level creative writing class, and worked tirelessly to gain all the learning I could. For the first time in my life I wasn’t passively expecting the information to be drilled into me. I was going out to find it myself.
Rather than confining myself to the extra-curricular and educational opportunities already offered, I strived to expand The Marin School programs, and myself, to include new ideas and possibilities. I found myself thriving in a school I had once written off as too out-of-the-box for me. Throughout my time at The Marin School, I have taken almost all of the academic courses offered. I find myself taking assignments that intrigue me and putting in extra research to take them one step farther. When we covered Lewis and Clark in Modern Native American History, I found myself at home reading Undaunted Courage from cover to cover. I created a mentoring program for the K-8 school up the road from TMS, and helped organize countless Student Counsel fundraisers and events. I wanted to be able to look back at my high school career and say, “I did that. I created something. I learned.”
My journey through high school was not the simplest it could have been, and at time it was downright infuriating. It taught me to learn from my mistakes, to open myself to new ideas, and to reach out and take hold of my own destiny. I could create and guide my own life experiences, but I had to be willing to put in the time and the effort. I had to hold the reins.
It is this knowledge that I carry with me as I journey into the rest of my life. I remind myself constantly to be open to the new the creative, the unique. I shouldn’t ever be satisfied with the minimum offered, but I should take charge and pursue more. My misconceptions taught me that sometimes you have to work through the difficult hours to appreciate the good ones, and that most often, if you take off the blinders, the brilliance will find a way in.