My First Year at West

                 My first year at West was amazing; there were many exciting things to do. These things ranged D&D Club (Dungeons and Dragons, yes I like that kind of stuff), to amazing classes, such as music, or signing yearbooks with/for friends. At West, I had an enjoyable first year, and even though I still would like to go to Earl of March, I can live with West.

                 You’re standing behind the doors to the gym, wondering: “What’s going to happen next?”, when suddenly the doors open. You walk through to find the link crew waiting for you there, and celebrating that you chose West. It all starts off with a bridge, or sort of like one (I mean with the hands pointed over you). Then you grab your name tag, stick it to your shirt and sit down on the bleachers. Once everyone is settled in, you learn a bit about West, watch a funny video (Ours was about the song “Friday”,) and do a series of activities. The motto of link crew this year was: “The Quest to Make the Best of West.” I found that clever. We then went to individual classrooms with groups and did different activities. You are now probably wondering, what is link crew? It is a method of getting students at a school (or people in general) to know each other in general and hopefully get them to become friends.

                The classes at the school weren’t always classified as “fun”, but they had interesting activities. An example is the “Agree, Strongly Agree, Disagree, and Strongly Disagree”. Each one was posted at a different corner in the room. The teacher would make a statement and the students would have to go and choose a corner based on what they think. This happened to me in English class. Another example is the fact that we watch movies that can be educational, but is mainly entertaining. I watched Wall-E in geography class. Usually though, the movies come with questions to answer and to be handed in at the end of the movie. The teacher should give you about 5 minutes to complete the questions, or to improve them.

                The teachers there were nice. They almost never got upset at you (even never), and they found fun ways to teach the classes. In science class, I had a teacher called Mme.McColeman, and she was making up these funny jokes about science (or at least tried to). Even if they weren’t funny she still put up the effort, which isn’t always something you see every day. They were always patient with you, and it took a lot to make them snap and tell you to either move, or confiscate something if you were using it. They never yelled (which wasn’t the case at other schools). I had a math teacher called Ms. Pert who always smiled, and put up a funny math comic at the end of class when she put up our homework. As well, for most subjects the teachers don’t even assign you homework.

Since music has always been my favourite subject, I made a separate paragraph for it. At the beginning of day 1s on second semester, I just love to sit down and play music. I always say music is my life, and I always will. I play the clarinet and the drums (I prefer drums though). There is music class, r&b band, and concert band. I chose r&b because it is smaller; therefore lower chance of competition for drums, and better music. I got percussion for the song “Doin’ it Right”, and played cowbell for the song “Shake a Tail Feather”.  This year there was a band trip to Boston. I was going to go but I didn’t know what the first payment was until after the due date. There is a band trip every few years.

                There are a variety of different clubs and activities. Examples are the social justice club, Friday prayers, and d&d club (Dungeons and Dragons club). Those are only a few examples of them, there’s also sports teams, intramurals, and many other types of clubs. I’ll explain Dungeons and Dragons though. Dungeons and Dragons is a role playing game (RPG), in which you construct a character, with a variety of choices on what it could be: Race, Class, Alignment, and a lot more to choose from. There’s magic, or sword fighting, many things you can do. When you finish constructing your character, there’s a dungeon master (DM), who constructs the whole story line. You get assigned quests, buy things, compete in different competitions, and try to survive different obstacles. The most common thing in d&d though, is fighting people. Try to survive, because if you do, you get experience to level up, if you don’t, well, you don’t have a character anymore and you have to construct another one. When you gain enough experience points (XP), you level up, and can gain new things like utility spells, or new magic to do.

                We’ll now talk about sports. At West, there’s intramurals, and sport teams. Intramurals are activities being held in the gym. You make a team of friends, which are in the same house, and compete to win the intramurals. There are four houses: Blue (my house), Grey, White, and Red. Examples of activities are Floor Hockey, Dodge ball, and Volleyball. Of course, there’s a lot more activities. When you compete, you are given a shirt that says: “West True Sport” in capital letters. There are also the sports teams. You go through tryouts, and if you’re not one of the worst, you get picked. The sports teams can include hockey, soccer, golf, and many more.

                In grade 12 there is something called the senior prank. Each year the grade twelves pull off a prank before they go. Unfortunately last year there wasn’t a grade 12 prank though because it wasn’t planned

Now you know a little bit about West, but if you want to learn more, you have to go to it. Find out about working in the cafeteria, or meet new people, there is a wide variety of things that you can see and do at West.