#you spend your high school career learning how to analyze lit in english class

[lousloan]

“You can drag my body to school but my spirit refuses to go.”

Task 001: Back to school

What was your character’s favorite year of school? And, what was their least favorite year? ( this can range from first grade, all the way through high school/some college years )

For the most part Louise always loved school. She may not have felt the most academically gifted, but she loved getting to spend so much of the time around other people. A fact that made picking her favourite year difficult, finally settling on her first year of middle school as her favourite. Getting to learn from different people was something she loved – and it was a year she could remember an extra dose of excitement when she started. Second place would be starting college considering she was studying something she loved, but while that same excitement was there for her, there was more trepidation over starting something new than she had when she was younger. Her least favourite was her junior year of high school. Missing a couple of months of classes during treatment, meant going back after winter break was nerve-wracking for her. Trying to get used to being back in a proper school setting, while dealing with whispers behind her back that she hadn’t experienced before. She’d been given the work to do while in treatment so she wasn’t far behind academically, but the social aspect made it more difficult – until she decided to pretend that everything was fine, and hoped that everyone else would follow suit.

What were your character’s favorite and least favorite school subjects?

Math, in particular algebra, was always least favourite subject. It wasn’t her worst subject, her grades were generally good – but she never saw the point in it. She couldn’t translate what they’d learnt in class to real world usages, leading her to think the entire thing was meaningless for her. She knew there were some careers where it was needed, but for her it seemed like pointless work when it wasn’t going to come back up.

English Lit was her favourite subject, getting to examine texts and analyze them was something she always found interesting. Not only because she got to evaluate her own thoughts about it, but she got to hear other people’s views on the text – views that could be wildly different than her own, and she’d always loved getting to see new perspectives to things. Even if she didn’t necessarily agree, she thought it was useful to get to see the world through other’s eyes.

Did your character take part in any clubs, sports, or other school activities?

Theatre was always her favourite school activity. She avoided sports wherever she could – but she did also sign up to the environmental club and the LGBTQ+ club at the school. While she happened to shy away from relationships, she always said she happened to be a very proud ‘B’ and didn’t see a reason to hide that.

Did your character have a high school sweetheart type of relationship in school? Alternatively, did your character have any notable crushes/other romantic relationships ( maybe some not-as-sweet relationships )?

There was one person that Louise genuinely liked, but her friend pushed her away from them – wanting to cut off any good influences in her life. Louise had always been all too easily influenced, and said friend pushed her towards all the wrong kind of people for her. Older people, people who’d drink when she never wanted to, people who liked to think of the law as something they didn’t need to follow. As much as she knew they weren’t the right kind of people for her, in the moment it felt like love to her – and she’d always wanted to be loved and tended to follow whatever they wanted from her – ignoring the people she knew would be better and practically cut the person who she did care for/her only real crush out of her life. By the time she wised up and told the person she truly cared for how she felt, they were leaving for college.

Who was your characters best friend through their different stages of schooling, or maybe, who was their closest friend that they maybe lost touch with after graduation?

Louise’s best friend until the end of middle school was the twins that used to live a couple of doors down – Layla and Leo. There was always a joke about the matching initials making her their unofficial triplet. While she’d always found it easy to make friends, the fact she saw the twins so much away from school and they grew up together meant that she was the closest to them. When they moved away at the end of middle school, it devastated her. She knew she had other people, but she’d never known life without them and the move to high school seemed intimidating enough without adding to it sans her normal support system. During the summer between middle school and high school is when she got closer to the people in her theatre group away from school – by the time she started high school, which she was still her peppy, bubbly self who’d talk to anyone and had a decent friend group – she’d call the friends she knew who were in college her best friends – mostly because it made her feel more mature than she truly was at that point of her life. She does still keep in contact with the twins, and they see each other whenever the twins come to visit their family – but she cut off contact with most the older people she used to call friends, at least as much as she could when they were still in

#sghqtask