My journey through LASA has been an unconventional one. Looking back on it, I’m realizing now just how lucky I am to have been able to attend LASA and make a ton of amazing memories with a bunch of fantastic people. I spent most of my time with a group of friends called “The Bench,” and there were about eight of us. There are so many memories we made but there are a few that stand out to me.

It was a chilly Monday afternoon and it had just rained the night before. As I slowly walked closer and closer to The Bench, I was greeted with an odd sight. While Dima and Jason were throwing the frisbee, James, Henry and Dodie were at the fence staring and pointing at what looked like a four legged fluffy creature. As I got closer I saw that it was either a small wolf, a coyote or hopefully a dog. Upon first sight I dropped my backpack and hopped the fence hoping to tame the wild beast. While getting closer I started to think that maybe this was not such a smart idea. What if the animal had rabies? What if the animal attacked me? So naturally, I kept moving closer. When I was about fifteen feet away, I could see that it was a dog. Half of his body was wet and he was shivering like crazy. Soon, we were all huddled around the dog, petting him and trying to keep him warm. Soon after, we decided to name him Chomper and declared him the Bench mascot. Inevitably we had to do something about him. We couldn’t leave him alone, stranded and freezing in the middle of the field. We called the front office and they sent someone to pick the dog up.

Another fond memory is the day of the bees. It was a completely supernatural event. First some backstory. We used to play frisbee out in the parking lot near the theater and the wellness trail. For a frisbee, we used an old, dilapidated piece of a children’s playscape with rusty nails sticking out of it, but this only increased the amount of fun that we had. Anyways, it started out as an average day of square frisbee when out of the blue a massive swarm of bees flew out from the trees of the mindfulness trail. There must’ve been thousands. We didn’t know what to do, some of us started screaming and running different directions and others just hit the deck and hoped that no bees decided to swarm down and take us out one by one.

The people at this school have given me some of the best memories I have, especially The Bench. When I started my high school career I was a quiet kid who dreamed of straight A’s and now I’m more of a louder kid who cares less about straight A’s and more about fun. High school has been a huge change in perspective for me and mostly because I didn’t take it too seriously. I ended up taking AP Environmental Science just to hang out with friends and then I realized that it is the career path that I want to follow. I don’t think that I would be who I am or where I am if I had gone to a larger school like Bowie so I guess I have LASA to thank for that.