Commentary: End of year wrap-up

After attending public school and coming to Fresno Christian as a freshman, I experienced a major culture shock. It was weird knowing the name of every person in my FC classes and seeing them almost every day.

One of my favorite memories I will ever have from this school is when The Feather adviser Stobbe, was our freshman English teacher. I remember immediately thinking to myself that this guy sounds crazy. You hear all these insane stories about him doing weird things in class.

Stobbe missed the first week of class that year while he was getting his daughter set up at college. When he finally arrived in week two of the school year, it got real. He came around every day to check our reading comprehension questions to make sure we did them. When we did not complete the questions, he took his pen and scribbled on our paper. I thought he was just trying to embarrass us but then I found out that was his actual handwriting.

I will always remember the stupid stuff my class did as freshman that Stobbe would not put up with. He sent our now Editor in Chief, Phillip Christopher, to the office for constantly snapping his fingers one day.

Freshman year was weird for me coming from a public school but was a good experience. For that, I have to give thanks to teachers that were fun and cared about our lives, such as Stobbe and my math teacher Dave Lee.

During my sophomore year, I decided to take journalism. To this day I do not know if that was smart or not. Stobbe was way different in the journalism lab than he was in English. He was actually serious and there was no messing around. I was used to him being this cynical sounding jokester always trying to have fun with his students. But journalism was not a normal class to him; it was a job.

He treated his writers like actual employees. He gave us free rein in his class as long as we got our work done. He wanted to win and that is what we did. We ended up winning the NSPA Pacemaker that year, the highest honor for scholastic journalism.

However, the best part of sophomore year was playing basketball and growing close to friends. I was in a small English class, which I enjoyed, and two of my best friends were in that class. That is where we started developing a brotherhood. Daniel Ayres and Trevor Trevino made that class genuinely fun to go to and I looked forward to it every day.

Sophomore year was my favorite year of high school. Between developing my writing skills in journalism and making some lifelong friends in English class, I really enjoyed that year and how it prepared me for the rest of high school.

During my junior year, I was not able to be in journalism because it would not work in my schedule. I really missed it that year but joined AP English instead. The extra writing help would have been very beneficial to me. Other than that, junior year was a complete roller coaster for me. It was filled with many ups and downs.

Today, I am thankful for the struggles I endured during junior year. It really instilled in me the perseverance skills that I will use the rest of my life. I learned to control some of my anxiety and OCD and honestly, I made huge strides in my personal life that year.

Senior year is where everything from my school life to personal life came together. I decided to play football, a sport I have always loved to watch and am very knowledgeable in. I really enjoyed the experience and made some strong bonds with my friends.

Basketball season was fun and we did well and went far, but fell short of the valley title. In the end, the experience was still fun. Going to Santa Cruz with my team for a state playoff game was an awesome experience. I really enjoyed the bonding with my teammates and wish the game occurred at the beginning of the year.

Additionally, journalism fit in my schedule again after skipping a year. It was a ginormous help in writing my college essays. I ended up getting into several great schools, probably because my essay was really well written.

Overall, Fresno Christian was an awesome experience. From going to public school through junior high coming to a private school in high school was kind of a cultural shock. Coming from a junior high school with 2,000 students to a high school with 200 was crazy. But, I am glad I made the decision to switch schools and come to FCS.

I would like to thank all the teachers I had in my high school career as well as my family and friends for always being supportive.

Dawson Triplitt will be in the Honors Program at Clovis Community College next fall and will be pursuing a degree in business and ultimately law after getting his business degree. 

For more senior reflections, read Senior Reflection: Nick LeBlanc.