“I feel like the community that I’ve built has influenced my personality in a way. Like, the way I approach life. For example, my freshman year, I was really hard on myself [for] the smallest things, probably because of my view, or the future I built in my head. I had to follow it. But I feel like the community that I built taught me how to move flexibly, to relax and just ease my mind.”
To RBHS senior Alyssa Mesfin, one of the captains of Speech and Debate and Director of Communications for Student Council (StuCo), the most important part of high school is not where you end up, but what happened to you in order to get there.
Q: What extracurricular activities did you do?
A: “I did marching band, and I’m doing StuCo and Speech and Debate.”
Q: Once you joined extracurriculars, how did talking to other people feel?
A: “My biggest regret when it comes to freshman year is the fact that I only talked to people that I knew [from] Gentry [Middle School]. I started talking to other people that I didn’t know probably at the end of my sophomore year. If they didn’t approach me, I didn’t approach them. So my freshman year, I kind of just stuck to the people that I knew, which I regret so much, because I could have met so many people.”
Q: Why did you only talk to people you knew?
A: “I think it was because [of] vulnerability, and I wanted to stick by people who I already knew or [were] comfortable with. Reaching out to other people, trying to get to know other people, that just seemed uncomfortable.”
Q: How have you grown over your years at Rock Bridge?
A: “I think I’ve gotten [more] hope[ful]. I think I’ve [become] more outgoing. I’ve stopped caring about people’s opinions. I think it’s a really good thing to do, especially when you’re going out. But I think I’ve gotten more charismatic, I hope.”
Q: What made you get over the mindset of sticking to people you knew?
A: “One of my closest friends, she’s very charismatic. […] She approached me [during] summer school of freshman year, but we didn’t become really close friends until the end of my sophomore year. She is very extroverted, so she dragged me to meet new people and eventually, I was able to start doing it on my own. Being in the same clubs for four years straight, it makes you get to know people.”
Q: How did it feel when you realized that you can talk to people on your own?
A: “I started making friends everywhere. It was so fun. And now, I have so many friends that I wasn’t [friends with] in middle school that I met and that I could see maybe [being] friends [with] in college.”
Q: What do you think is the most important part about talking to other people and your friends and making connections?
A: “I think the support and validation that you get from them. There’s many times from high school where I thought I was going crazy, and they were all just kind of there if I needed someone to talk to me or if I just needed someone to validate my feelings. They’re always there, on your team, on your side and having that support system [is great], especially in high school when you’re going through a lot.”
Q: Can you tell me why you think the friends that you made and the community that you’ve grown is important to you?
A: “I feel like the community that I’ve built has influenced my personality in a way. The way I approach life, for example, my freshman year, I was really hard on myself [for] the smallest things because of my view, or the future I built in my head. I had to follow it, but I feel like the community that I built taught me how to move flexibly, to relax and just ease my mind.”
Q: You don’t have to be very specific about it because it can be personal, but was there a time where you had a specific memory with a friend that wasn’t that great?
A: “[In] my junior year, something happened to me that my friend also experienced […]. But we were both kind of just experiencing the same thing together. […] We were there for each other in the sense that we both understood what each other were going through.”
Q: How did that feel?
A: “It felt like I wasn’t alone. It felt like it wasn’t just me. I wasn’t the black sheep in a field of white sheep. There was someone that was just like me.”
Q: How different do you think your high school experience would have been if you just hadn’t branched out and stuck to the people that you knew?
A: “I don’t think I would have accomplished a lot of stuff that I have now, honestly. Because these friends that I had from middle school, [and] my freshman year, aren’t in any of the activities that I do right now. They’re not in Speech and Debate or StuCo. So if I didn’t branch out, then I wouldn’t have friends.”
