When I first came to the high school, it was before the year started. My mom was taking me on a trip so I could familiarize myself with the school; she was worried that I would get lost otherwise. At the time, I thought it wasn’t very different from the middle school: dull and uninteresting. Once the year started and I was settled in, not much happened to change my mind. There were still the same kinds of teachers; ones who were too excited and ones who just wanted us to stop talking and learn. There was still the incessant chatter and noise from students who didn’t care about the classes they were in. It was still the same, and I still didn’t care about most of it.

Then, a few weeks in, the school held its club fair. I decided at the start of the year that I would join a club, because I heard it was good for college applications. Once I went, I was immediately drawn to the table Japanese Club table. As a Japanese student, I figured that club was as good as any, and I signed up. School continued as usual for a few weeks after that, until the day of the first meeting finally rolled around.

When I walked into the club meeting, I quickly made my way to the empty back of the room, put my things down, and sat. As people made their way to the room and things got started, I noticed something. Everyone seemed very happy to be there. People were smiling and laughing and having a good time, as a group of friends. I didn’t talk to anyone at that meeting, but I did not mind. I’ve never been one to start conversations with people I did not know, and just being around that general sense of fun and joy was enough to brighten up my day.

As I went to more and more meetings, I found that things were starting to change, both at the meetings and in my daily life. I saw that, whether they were cheerful or strict, all the teachers just wanted to do their job. The noise of the other students became softer to my ears, as I came to recognize it as the sound of people trying to have fun. And at the meetings, I was starting to talk to people. At first I would just add something to a group conversation on occasion, not yet knowing exactly what to say. But soon enough, I started to talk to the fellow members about what we were doing that week, things that were happening in our classes, and shared interests.

By the end of the year, I was a completely different person than I was at the start. My experiences with my new friends changed me, turned me from the kid who sat in the back of the room into someone who loves sitting around and talking with his friends more than he does almost anything else. They made me realize that I wasn’t really happy in the years leading up to then, and they made me change that. I grew more as a person in that year than I had in the 14 years leading up to that, and it’s all thanks to those wonderful friends.