Back to School

As my winter break began to come to an end, I found myself dreading the beginning of the second semester of my junior year in high school. My winter break had been full of relaxation, sleeping, and spending time with friends and family. I felt rested up and ready for school but as Monday night rolled around I wasn’t so sure. My sleeping schedule was way off and because of this I had a very hard time falling asleep. I was used to going to bed around two o’clock in the morning and waking up whenever the sun was shining bright enough through my windows that I woke up. But this sleeping schedule doesn’t really work for school and I was not ready to go to bed at eleven and wake up at seven. In some ways I was ready to go back to school but in other ways I definitely was not. As I thought about it I realized that I only have three semesters of high school left before I go off to college. This is both exciting and scary for me, but nonetheless, a startling realization for me. I was ready to get back to school and see all my friends but I was not ready for homework and tests to start up again.

At the beginning of the week I heard some mumbling about the possibility of snow on Friday. Initially I was excited to hear about this possibility but then I realized that we live in Georgia and it never snows in Georgia. If it did happen to snow I was fairly certain that we would not have school because once again-it never snows in Georgia- and school is cancelled at the first sight of snow or ice. Tuesday and Wednesday came and went, and as Thursday rolled around, the possibility of wintery weather was increasing by the minute. Thursday started out as any normal day would but as the day went on, the temperature dropped and snow clouds began to blanket the sky. During 5th period on Thursday I went outside to test out the hot air balloon that my group had built in Physics and I noticed tiny white things falling out of the sky. It wasn’t much but it was snow! Sixth period rolled around and I could see that the snow was picking up. Around three o’clock the snow was really coming down and I began to think that there was a good chance that school would be cancelled on Friday. The final school bell rang, and like most other students, I went outside to see one of the rarest sights in Georgia, snow.

The afternoon rolled into the evening and as I prepared to watch Alabama take on Texas in the BCS National Championship Game, the snow continued to fall at a heavy and steady rate. During almost every commercial break of the game I would get up to look outside and the sight almost never changed- snow was still falling and it was still accumulating on the ground. Time passed, the game went on, and more snow fell. I checked the news stations every once in a while and it wasn’t until around eleven-thirty that I saw “Fulton County Schools – Cancelled” flash on the television. Just what the doctor ordered – a three day weekend for me to catch up on the sleep lost during the week and more readily prepare myself for school.