Throughout middle school, I secretly dreaded the end of eighth grade, and graduation in particular. It meant moving on to bigger (and not so much better) things, and I was absolutely worried silly over what high school would be like. A mixture of the media and horror stories from older, high school-attending friends had me quaking in my tiny eighth-grader boots. Everything I knew told me that I could look forward to such pleasantries as being shoved into lockers, stuffed into trash cans, and pranked mercilessly. All of the information handed to me pointed toward a rather horrible 'truth' regarding high school: my ninth through twelfth grade years would be the worst of my life.
Looking back, I can still see why I had that impression, but I can also see why it changed. My paradigm, that high school was going to be awful, was immediately put under suspicion when I arrived on the first day. Everyone seemed friendly, if a bit shy. The only screams or shouts were ones of joy or laughter. No one was shoved into a locker (though a few people climbed into them by choice). All of this new information clashed with my previous paradigm, and there was simply no way to repair the damage done to that particular lens.
It was, I suppose, more of a change altogether than a simply shift, but I was thankful for it all the same. With my adjusted paradigm in use, the incoming information regarding day-to-day life in high school made more sense, and thus my confidence in my paradigm, as well as my future happiness, grew.
*phew* I'm glad to hear that your original paradigm was determined to be inaccurate. Not that those things don't happen in some high schools, but at least your experience has shown that it's not necessarily a standard part of high school life. Good example.
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