a-lee

My High School Years

http://animoto.com/play/t7WSPN1q9fhZXkRFz5XapA

Script: My name is Lee MacCabe. I guess I’ll start with freshmen year. I don’t remember a ton about it, just that it wasn’t that great. I was too new to high school, not used to it. A defining event freshmen year is hard to find, so I’ll just say it was an important year because it was the introduction to high school, some of the best years of my life. The best part of freshmen year was my first good concert, AC/DC. Over the summer after freshmen year I picked up a few instruments, first was guitar. My first guitar was a hand-me-down from my brother who had that the guitar for 10 years and had gotten it signed by all of Powerman 5000. I still play that guitar all the time. Next came drums and bass, about at the same time, I don’t play either of those as much as guitar, but they are a good bit of fun. Sophomore year was a little bit easier than freshmen year. I went out karaokeing, which is now a word, most weekends with my oldest brother. Doing this helped me to become less shy and be able to let loose in front of people. The school work sophomore year was super easy, which means I had more time to focus on my hobbies, though never playing any instrument for too long each day because of my short attention span. Sophomore year is also when I really started making new friends. James introduced me to Chris who introduced me to a whole new world of people, most importantly Cassidy. Cassidy quickly became of my best friends, and still is today. The summer after sophomore year was the first time I climbed a mountain. I climbed Mount Katahdin in Maine. We stayed at a hotel where we all went to bed at about midnight and got up at 4:30A.M. to head off to the mountain. The reason we got up so early is that they only let a few groups climb Mount Katahdin each day. By noon we had reached the plateau on the mountain and by 1 PM we were standing a mile in the sky, with an endless view in every direction. There was no lunch that day and we got back down at around 4 PM and were finally eating again by 6PM. I joined a band as the lead guitarist and began to write music with them; however, it would be over a year until a name was decided. The stereotypical junior year was, of course, when school got more difficult. Not a ton to say here except that I kept at school and my hobbies and eventually managed to balance out my life. It was the first year in my life that my notebooks were actually overflowing with notes, and well taken ones too. Junior year was also the year that Cassidy moved to Virginia, a mile from my cousins. Summer after junior year was huge. I stayed at a place I always love to be at for two weeks in the beginning of the summer, Boston. Of any places to vacation Boston is near the top of my list, we have numerous family friends scattered about, which makes it that much better of a place. Next I went to Myrtle beach, another one of my favorite places. By this summer my band had been named Concave Productions, Halfway Friday, Squidpocalypse, and others, but we still didn’t have a set name. Most of the summer was spent either on vacation or hanging out with friends. At the end of the summer I reluctantly went on a rafting trip my mom signed me up for, but little did I know I would meet yet another one of my closest friends there. The trip ended up being fun either way, meeting Jessica, someone who would become a good friend was just a bonus. Senior year has been the best year. I have maybe been slacking on school a little, but it was worth it. I got into a college I wanted to, Appalachian State, so the tiny bit of slacking didn’t hurt much. Hanging out with friends and music were my primary focuses during this year. Throughout the year I have put friends first, school second, and my job third. How I am still one of the most valued employees there is easy, no one else does what they are supposed to when they are supposed to so I do what I’m supposed to when I’m supposed to. This, I found, is the easiest way to stand out at work. As for school, I did homework from when I got home until about 5 every day, then whatever else of it I finished when I was done hanging out with friends was all I did. Of course each day I started with my English homework. During the first semester my band finally decided on a name, Androcktasia. We have been working on music a ton. All this not stressing out over school was probably overall good for me; it made me and generally happier person. After all that has happened, high school has been the best four years of my life so far. And looking back, middle school was better than elementary school, and high school was better than middle school, so I’m thinking that college will be the ride of my life.