By:Lydia Bradley
I recently spent the whole day at a different school, in a different town, surrounded by people I had never met nor even thought about talking to. Being from Eaton High School, this was officially the challenge of a lifetime. On April 16, I lived the life of a student at Fort Collins High School shadowing a fellow student and Spilled Ink staff member, Amanda Evans. Fort Collins High School’s student body is roughly 1,500 students larger than Eaton’s average population of 500 students. As we pulled into the parking lot, my nerves began to set in. I was a small town kid in a school three times the size of my own. As I walked in the door and looked around, my eyes automatically fell to the long hallway known as the “spine”. Evans eventually found me and attempted to explain FCHS’ various hallway names. I ended up walking around in a complete daze as I tried to understand this foreign place.
Our day began in Pre-Ap Lit, and we slowly moved on to various classes like Spanish Two and Algebra Two. The class size was extremely different compared to a normal class size at EHS. An average class size at FCHS is around 30 students compared to EHS’s average class of 20 students. Since the class sizes are so different, it is clear that the curriculum and teachers at FCHS have had to adapt in comparison to the usual classes at EHS. I was able to have a conversation with one of the English teachers, Laurie Rice who has been at FCHS for nine years. Rice said the great thing about taking a Pre-AP Lit class is helping sophomores prepare for the ACT as a junior because they are “reading more and being pushed more, which does help with the test”.
After spending the day with Evans, I realized that this truly was a different experience. I met people that I may have never socialized with, simply because these people were As we toured the school, I began to realize that I am from a school that is completely isolated from the rest of the world due to the fact that Eaton is a small community that is not always affected by the big issues play an important role in larger cities. I also realized that in a larger school, it is harder to get to know everyone on a personal level. It became clear that even though both schools are totally different from one another, they are actually very similar at the end of the day. I spent the day I enjoyed spending the day being a shadow at a school that honestly scared me. I made some amazing friends there, and I’m glad that I took on the challenge to learn something new about a different school that really isn’t so far from home.
