Avatar Story: Becoming a Community

[fblike] Gretchen Walch

At the end of my junior year I recall the excitement our class had about meeting, befriending, and mentoring the in-coming juniors, class of 2015. We called them “our juniors” and in the words of senior Samantha Dinga, we wanted “to be their seniors!” It is safe to say that nearly all of the seniors wanted to be community leaders and the competition for these official positions was tight. To our excitement, now that everyone is moved in the seniors have 72 new friends—the juniors.

Any day of the week someone sitting on the fourth floor common area of the Gatton Academy can hear the voices rising from third floor commons. During the morning and afternoon there might be questions to seniors about CS homework or the tip tap of the keyboard writing a lab report. Throughout the evening it is full of laughter and the joined voices of juniors and seniors, discussing their favorite actors, meeting about yearbook, anime, or chatting about some of the professors we enjoy or the “nerdy” topics we “fan-girl over.”

Today I went on third floor and asked the juniors and seniors there what they thought about the relationship between the classes. Good news: the consensus is that we like each other.