A Love Letter to An Unexpected Journey
My NSA Story
by Savannah Laux
What I consider to be the most important decision of my young life was made during a rather uneventful day. The world around me was quiet and unassuming but inside I felt like water building behind a dam which burst in full force when I opened my front door. I marched into my house after school and announced to my family, “I want to be homeschooled.” My mother agreed, and that was that. To the outside observer, this exchange probably looked insane but to my mother and me, those words were the sound of the dam cracking open and water rushing through.
Homeschooling, let alone online school, had never been an option for the majority of my life. It was due to one of my close friends becoming homeschooled that I even became aware of the opportunity. My public school’s education had never been what my parents wanted for me and I had rejected every time my mother gave me the option of a different form of schooling; private school, homeschooling, transferring. I was bored and my parents knew that but I did not want to leave my friends. I had known most of the kids since preschool and they meant something to me.
Though I denied it at first, as more years passed I started to feel that the place I was in was not for me. It was not just academics but the people as well. I had known everyone since we were little and because of that, I was stagnant. Everyone already knew everyone and you could not get out of the boxes people had put you in. I wanted to grow and change and gain new interests and passions but I felt stuck. My parents had always taught me that if I am unhappy with my situation to change it. I was unhappy, so, I changed it. I did not go back to school after Christmas break in 8th grade and that is how I came to NorthStar.
I started NorthStar in 9th grade and now I am a senior about to graduate. I will not say that this unexpected journey has been easy. I had to learn a lot of life lessons the hard way, such as time management and maintaining a social life. But I will always count that day, walking through my front door, as the best decision I have ever made in my life. I have grown more as a person than I ever thought possible. I still vividly remember the days I would walk through my school halls with my hoodie zipped, hunched over, with my headphones shoved in my ears. Now I lead zoom calls for a NorthStar class I started. In my sophomore year, I joined the Navigator, NorthStar’s student newspaper. I started as an editor and soon I became the editor-in-chief. I had so many ideas for the Navigator I did not even know where to start. It was through the support of my new friends and NSA’s amazing staff that I had the guts and the opportunity to try and succeed in having the Navigator become a class. I would never have dared to go after a dream like that before NorthStar.
It has been through NorthStar classes I have realized how deeply I want to help people and just how I want to go about doing that. It has been at NorthStar I have befriended such amazing people who helped me to see that the world is so much bigger than I first thought. It has been at NorthStar I have become who I am today, someone I am proud to be. Even though I do not know my future, I know this, NorthStar will forever be one of the best things that ever happened to me and I only hope that one day I can give back as much as NorthStar gave. Even though the idea of graduating is daunting, it is because of the support I have found in my teachers and friends that I feel ready. Thank you, stay iNSAne.
Savannah Laux is the editor-in-chief of the Navigator and founder of the Navigator class at NSA. She is a senior and has been with NSA for three years. Savannah hopes to have a career as a lawyer and work in the area of human rights. Some of her hobbies are reading, writing, and music. She has a strong passion for writing that fuels her love for the Navigator.