JA – For 9th and 10 th grades, I was in a school that was completely wrong for me. My family had moved a few days before I started high school and I wasn’t familiar with the schools in the new community, and my mother also kind of pushed me to go to a particular school which turned out to be totally not my type.
I realized from the beginning that it was the wrong place for me, so I asked my mother if I could switch and she gave me a reason why it wasn’t possible. I was a good kid, so I didn’t say anything else for 2 years.
The summer after 10th grade I worked in a camp whose raison d’etre was that the kids and counselors were from all different schools. Except that all different schools didn’t include the school I was in, but it did include the school I wanted to go to. Spending the summer with all these girls who were in the school I wanted to be in, and feeling bad about the fact that I was the only one from my school made me really upset about the whole situation.
At the end of the summer, we got something in the mail from school about the new school year, and I just started crying. My mother was like, “What’s wrong?” So I said, “I want to switch to ____.” So she was like, fine, no problem. And I switched.
That is when I learned that crying is the way to get what you want, but it usually doesn’t occur to me to cry in front of other people. It was a bit frustrating to think that I spent 2 years being miserable when that was all it took!
I am very glad I switched. I didn’t like the second school either but for different reasons than the reasons that I didn’t like the first school. Even though I didn’t like the second school either, I am still glad I switched because the first school was really not the right place for me (too modern). I once told someone that I’m glad I switched because now I can say that I went to Bais Yaakov. That might sound superficial but it’s really not – it’s just being realistic.
Socially it was hard since most of the kids had been together since kindergarten. Also, even though they were more similar to me in certain ways, they were different in others. But I had a very hard time socially in the first school as well, albeit for different reasons. And since I didn’t like either school anyhow, I’m glad I only had to deal with each one for two years.
Bottom line: I am glad I switched. But at the same time, I don’t recommend it for everyone. You have to think about the reasons why you want to switch and if things will really be better in the second place.