An autobiograpic account by Alinoé Gerard S1FRA
Four years ago I lived in a great house, with my sister, my parents and my two cats. I was in a very small school, nearby my house. The school was okay. My teacher was very sweet. I liked her. I had two friends whom I could count on. My mother worked in a school that she loved. In my street lived my first best – really BEST— friend with whom I spent all my free-time. It was a happy life.
One day, my mother applied for a teaching position at ESMol. She didn’t think she would receive an offer and she gave it a try out of curiosity. We were at a friend of my mother’s house for dinner when my mum got an email from the school who offered her a post at ESMol to teach philosophy and ethics. The next evening, she asked us – my sister and me — if we wanted to come with her to this school. My sister directly said ‘yes!’ because she didn’t like our old school. I wasn’t sure, but I just said ‘yes’, without thinking.
Unfortunately, ESMol was located one hour from our home. So my mother met another new teacher that lived nearby 
and decided to ride share to ESMol. My mother went on to become a very good friend of this colleague. The first school day morning, the other teacher came to our house and we rode together to school. I arrived at school. I was extremely surprised! ‘This school is super big,’ I thought. ‘I’m never going to find my way in there!’ My mother brought me to class, where I met my teacher who looked super nice. The teacher showed me my seat; next to a very smart looking girl.
At the beginning, everyone thought I was annoying because I always asked the way to our classes. I soon became best friends with the girl I originally sat next to. There was a certain girl in our class who was not well-liked. I acted like I 
didn’t like her either in order to fit in. After a while, I realized that she wasn’t very kind to other students. The year passed. In the end, I managed to find my way through the corridors. My teacher and my best friend loved me while the rest of the class hated me. At the end of the P3, some students moved away to other schools: ‘the enemy of the class’, another girl of my class and my best friend. I was very sad because the only friend I had in the school was leaving.
Three months later, the next school year began. We were a double class: P4-P5. I was in P4 with only one other girl (so we were just two) because the other three girls had left at the end the previous year. I didn’t have the same teacher as the year before. The new teacher didn’t look nice. No one liked him. Over the year, I got to know him and it turned out that he was super nice. At the start of the year, everyone said they did not like me because I was the ‘teacher’s favourite’. I still didn’t have any friends. As the months went by and as I learned to know the girl who was with me in P4, we gradually became friends. Then something good happened: somehow it felt like I became friends with the whole class. It wasn’t perfect. We had ups and downs. Then at the end the year, my friend and I had a super big fight. Not the best way to finish the school year.
Last year in P5, five new students joined our class. Now, in total we were four girls and three boys. I acted as if the other girl and I were friends to avoid more problems. She did the same thing without too much trouble. We soon actually became friends again and with the other girls we formed a group called “Team Lines”. Then Corona arrived. Online schooling. It was not as good as sitting in a real class room because people were always easily distracted. After a while, we could go back to school again – ‘in situ’. A lot had changed. For example: we couldn’t eat in the canteen so we took our own packed lunches everyday and ate on picnic blankets. That was very fun. We didn’t even have to wear masks!
Now, I’m in S1, a lot of new students have joined our class again and I have a lot of friends. At school I have a lot of fun and I wake up in the morning and think “Yay, school today, I can see my friends again!”
