The High School Experience

Four Years of School Through the Eyes of David Tesch

David Tesch, Editor-in-Chief
June 1, 2022

The date was September 4th, 2018, the day when I entered this building called Lakeland High School for the first of many times. Just recently left middle school and had to adapt to a whole new environment.

At this time, and the rest of my life beforehand, I was that token “Quiet Kid”. I sat in the back, didn’t talk to many people, and just did what I had to do. Turn in my work and get a good grade.

Freshman year was as bad as you can think of for someone, the new environment and having to adapt to all the changes that high school held for me was definitely a challenging one.

As though my philosophy of doing my work and getting good grades never changed, what did change was an astronomical amount. You couldn’t get two people, one from freshman year, and one from senior year next to stand next to each other and say “These two are the same person”.

My freshman year contained a lot of embarrassment of not knowing where I was going in class, Including a time when Steve Seymour showed me where my math class was. Trying to branch out to new people, and wearing the same exact big orange Denver Broncos hoodie, blue jeans, and some random And1 shoes I got from Walmart.

In any high school, you dealt with higher classmen of people picking on you for being a freshman and having to adapt to how everyone you once knew was changing right in front of your eyes.

My sophomore year was a little of the same but the biggest difference between this year compared to every other is how it ended.

COVID-19 hit during my Sophomore year of high school, and that led me to have a lot of free time on my hands since teachers were giving out little to no assignments and there wasn’t much for me to do.

This change of quarantine was one of, if not the greatest thing that ever happened to me. Taking the opportunity of all this free time, I truly took advantage of it and changed my life forever.

I started researching and watching videos on health and exercise, how to dress better, how to be more confident, how to take care of myself better, etc.

My Junior year of high school was the biggest change from one year to another. I took this little class called Journalism ran by Michael Dunn, which was its first year of being a part of the high school.

Wanting to be a sports writer in the future, this class was the perfect opportunity to explore that path in my life. I learned how to use a camera, how to write articles, and interview people. This class was by far the best class I have ever taken in High School.

From not knowing how to use a camera, to take some of the best photos of the years, having my own photos be used all over the school in promotions and yearbooks. Different athletes prompted my photography and used the photos I took on their Instagram pages and profile pictures.

My articles were viewed by many parents and teachers, getting emails saying how well I wrote the articles and how much they enjoyed them.

Over the course of my junior year of high school, I lost over 50 pounds and became the healthiest I have ever been in my life.

What journalism brought me was one of the greatest opportunities in my high school career. Mark Gorton, the announcer at Lakeland, gave me the chance to announce baseball games for a little bit of cash.

Although the money was nice, the announcing opened up a whole new can of worms for me entering my senior year of high school.

I did on-field announcing during football games, announced online with hello hawks on girls’ and boys’ basketball games, and did some school gigs such as Mr. LHS, Powderpuff football, and others.

My last and best year of high school was picture perfect. I became the editor-in-chief of the Journalism class

. In which I help lead the class and the website to become very successful and have so many more views and visits to the website than the previous year.

My nickname my senior year was “Fresh Tesch”, due to my Instagram name change.

I got the opportunity to sit on the homecoming coach with my best friend during the homecoming football game where we won 59-0.

I participated on the Speech Team and won at districts. We flew on multiple planes down to state and had a great time with Collen Hall and my other teammates.

In my senior year, I had to decide where I wanted to continue my education. After many choices and decisions, I ended up choosing Idaho State University in Pocatello to get a degree in Finance.

Going through my four years of high school, the biggest lesson I learned was to make the most out of everything. Don’t waste any opportunities to show off your skills, talents, and what you are able to do.

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