At the beginning of my junior year, when I picked up my school supplies, I was thrilled to see I was missing a play by Shakespeare. I dreaded reading those plays.
Not only did it seem that they were written in a completely foreign language, but the plots felt somewhat subpar. It also didn’t help that seemingly every English teacher was being paid to adore all his work.
One does not seek out Shakespeare; it is assigned and mandatory. You often come into class unprepared, skeptical, and very confused.
High school follows a similar pattern.
No one walks through the doors as a freshman with any semblance of a purpose. You arrive uncertain, in an unfamiliar place and social hierarchy you do not yet understand.
High school is a text written in a completely foreign language.
But slowly, comprehension comes.
When I read Othello freshman year, I finished the play not even knowing Othello had died. This year, while reading Hamlet, I understood the majority of the play without any translation. This is similar to the way that I had no idea how to check my grades my entire first semester at South; now I check PowerSchool almost daily.
You start to naturally understand the difference between “thou” and “thee”, the same way you slowly understand the difference between the Old and New Pit.
Themes that once seemed abstract begin to make sense. You stop translating books and interactions word-for-word and start simply reading.
You start to change.
Around 85 percent of high school students will read Shakespeare, according to Whittier College. And although students might forget the specific plots and characters, they will remember performing Hamlet with classmates and their teacher trying his best to explain Hamlet’s soliloquy to second-semester seniors on a Monday morning.
Similarly, I will not leave high school remembering what I got on my Unit 6 Chemistry test or how well I did on that English essay junior year, but I will remember the lasting impact my teachers had on me, how much fun I had at The Oracle layouts, and all the amazing people that became my friends.
High school hands you a piece of text you can not understand and gives you four years to figure it out. By the time you make sens of it all, you are swapping it on stage for a diploma.
