I Didn't Mean to Skip Your Class! Honest!

Nothing kicks off your high school career any better than accidentally skipping one of your classes on the first day. You might be thinking to yourself "How does one accidentally skip a class?" It certainly was quite a feat for me and it still remains on the list of the dumbest things I've ever done.

Like most high school freshmen, I entered my first day with a mixture of excitement and nervousness. There was so much to get used to--a new building, new classrooms, new teachers, new faces in the hallways--but most importantly there was a new schedule. Each of us had our classes printed out on a small card and the tiny, old-school computer font told us the course name, room number, and teacher for each one. It was a bit difficult to read, but I managed to keep my schedule straight for most of the day.

I didn't run into any problems until my last two classes of the day. No one ever told me that there were seven classes a day; perhaps they thought we could figure that out for ourselves, or maybe they did and I just wasn't paying attention. Whatever the case, when it was time for 6th period, I went to my last class, Government, instead of English because I thought that it was 7th period.

I should've picked up on my blunder when my name wasn't on the teacher's list. Instead, both of us just assumed that some sort of mistake was made. So, I ended up sitting through the entire period in the wrong classroom with the wrong teacher. It wasn't until the bell rang and a different teacher along with different students started entering the classroom that I realized that it wasn't time to go home and that now it was 7th period. I accidentally skipped English class. Whoops!

When I got home from school, I explained my predicament to my dad and he wrote a note explaining the situation so I could show it to my teacher, the principal--whoever was going to ask me about it the next day. I felt terrible about what happened because I was never one to cause trouble, so I never had any negative run-ins with the school authorities. The next day, I was extremely nervous and I wondered if I was going to get in trouble. By the time Math class came around, I was kind of surprised that I had made it through that much of the day without a hitch, but then I was called out into the hallway to confront the English teacher whose class I missed and another woman who I believe was the assistant principal.

After explaining my situation and showing them the note, they let me off the hook scott free. My English teacher was especially cool about it and she ended up being my favorite teacher that year. She went on to recommend that I take GT English, and that's how I really started leaning toward English as my area of academic interest.

Certainly, a blunder like accidentally skipping a class made my first couple days of high school more nerve wracking than they needed to be, but it all turned out okay. If you're starting high school or college this year, just make sure you pay close attention to where you're supposed to go so you don't do something silly like this.