Before I forget (again), I'm going to do the Seven Things that Kate tagged me to do. A little known fact about me: I only moved twice when growing up. The first was from downstate Michigan to Charlevoix, MI when I was less than one years old. The second was merely across the driveway from the trailer to the partly finished house my dad had been building when I was about five years old. I only remember part of the second move. Mainly, that my mom was very pregnant and it was very hot out and I never seemed to stop carrying the boxes while walking along the "sidewalk" (really just two boards on the lawn).
My hearing loss was discovered when I was over a year and a half old. The story is that I was so observant and looked at everything that it was really quite impossible to tell I was missing something. I only have one memory from pre-hearing aids which consists of *very* vivid smells, colors, and movement. I have very vague memories otherwise from before learning how to read.
Despite living on the same property for my K-12 education, I went to seven different schools before my high school graduation.
1. The first was a pre-K in Petoskey that specialized in helping kids develop faster (since I had a lot of catching up to do). I first went there when I was three and attended two years. I have absolutely no memories of this school. I do remember the trailer we were living in, with a specific memory of watching "Alice in Wonderland" on the TV in the living room. This was my all-time favorite movie. I often wonder just how much I understood of the actual story since I couldn't read and there were no captions.
2. The second was my first year of kindergarten which was in East Jordan (quite a long haul on the bus everyday for a five-year-old). East Jordan's public elementary school contained the area's program for hearing impaired kids. I would spent half the day in kindergarten and the other half in the program. I never fit in with the other kids in the program, but we would all meet once a year to go skiing together all the way into high school. I remember walking down the hallway from one room to the next. I only vaguely remember the kindergarten class though there is a flash of me sitting on the floor with the rest of the kids while the teacher read with some kind of big easel. The program room stuck in my memories a bit more, including the dreaded speech lessons.
3. I like to joke that I flunked kindergarten. I moved to the Charlevoix public school system and started with the kindergarten class. They weren't sure whether I'd be ready for first grade after my year at East Jordan but apparently after the year was over, they said I'd do fine moving on to first grade. My parents had expected me to do kindergarten in Charlevoix, I think mostly for social reasons (easier to start with a new class than join one), so that's what I did. I remember being in awe of my teacher who could cut and color so well. I also played the narrator/introducer in the traditional play "Peter Rabbit." I was the first to have that role; our class was too big and we needed more roles.
4. Most of my elementary school experience was positive. Teasing either didn't happen to me or I took it good-naturedly. I had two best friends who got in a huge fight in third grade and never spoke to one another after that. One moved to a new school and the other joined the popular group. I spent fourth grade looking for a new friend who I had until sixth grade ended and she moved to Traverse City.
5. Predictably, sixth grade sucked. She eventually moved back and graduated in the same class as I did, but timing definitely wasn't good. I continued going to the middle school for a marking period (half semester) of seventh grade. So I was there for a grand total of 1.25 years.
6. And then I decided to go to the charter school in town that'd just started up and where some of my friends went. I had joined band sixth grade and that become my passion at the charter school. We had a really good band despite being small. I met my best friend through band. She was home-schooled but came to the charter school for band and Spanish. We went to Toronto, Colorado, and England on band trips.
7. After almost four years at the charter school, I started thinking more about the rest of my education. I really enjoyed math and did well in English and social studies. Science was really lacking and I didn't really care about it anyway. I decided my academic growth would be stunted if I continued at the charter school so I moved back to the public school. I went to the old high school building junior year and then we were moved into a new building for senior year which was further from my house. I didn't make any real solid friendships but I did a season each of cross country and track, I quit band after junior year (it just wasn't fun anymore), and I started working at libraries, both the high school and public ones. We had only one AP class offered to us, US Government, and I took it. I also made a point to take the more advanced classes (there were less than 10 of us in the Calculus class) and somehow got through Chemistry and Advanced Biology. My AP US Government teacher was a Kalamazoo College graduate and she was the one who got me interested in going there.
Well that turned out to be a bit longer than I'd expected. "Oh, I'll just list the seven schools I went to before college, easy," I thought. Oh well. I hope you enjoyed the short-ish history of the first 19 years of my life. It could have easily been a *lot* longer! Big chunks, such as the fact that I also have a younger brother, I played piano second grade onward, and I got into backpacking, didn't get mentioned at all. Er, well they have been mentioned now, but you know what I mean.
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