Tirzah’s NSA Story - Finding That Niche
By Tirzah H.
This article is not going to be strictly about how I came to NorthStar Academy, mainly because the reason I’m here doesn’t make for a very exciting article. So let us put it briefly:
My dad was looking for an accredited way to homeschool so that my sister could go to the Naval Academy. While searching for schools, he saw that a NorthStar graduate had gone on to the Naval Academy. He looked into NSA, liked it, and signed my sister up. Pretty soon I followed with a couple of courses and then my younger sister got some courses, and soon we were near full-time students.
See? I told you it wasn’t very exciting.
Honestly, the more I’ve been thinking about what we call these, our NSA’s stories… they aren’t really, are they? They’re the story of how we found NSA, but they don’t tell anything about what happens to us after that. They don’t even scratch the surface of our true NSA story. So that’s what I’ll tell you today. I’m going to tell you about how my NSA interaction, involvement, and niche grew and evolved over the three years I’ve been here.
When I first joined, interaction was a little tough for me. I have a Chromebook which means I wasn’t able to download FirstClass, the platform we all used back in the day. So I had to use the online version which, while functional for business purposes, made interacting in student threads and roleplays really hard. What took download-version-users seconds to type out and send, took me even more seconds of typing, copying, pasting, deleting, formatting, font-changing, color-changing, and in general acting like a thread surgeon so as to make it look like I was one of the download-version-users. The font and color change was especially important because that was how everyone kept track of who was who in both simple conversations and roleplays. Caleb had orange, Carolyn had purple, Micah had dark blue, I had big and green, etc. To be completely honest, I did do this because I wanted to fit in and be like everyone else, but also because if you messed up the format, everyone would get mad at you and grumble about online users (how to make this sound more lighthearted? I’m not allowed to use emojis in my article, help! Let’s add a “heheh”. That will make things better).
Despite my difficulties, I persevered! For the year I was on FirstClass I was able to join quests, make friends, be a part of the writing community, start my own NSA military (which was a total flop, but still fun while it lasted), and even join the Mages Guild and NaAT. However, being an online-version-user was what made me become friends with my best NSA friend, Alexis, who was also an online-version-user. There was a way to chat that only online-version-people could do, so we chatted that way, and actually ended up writing and publishing a book together.
And then, we moved from FirstClass to Microsoft Teams. It was very sad, of course, and I’m still not totally reconciled to it, but it was actually technically better for me because now I was on the same level as everyone else and could interact just the same. However, the ancient ways of NSA were quickly dying out. Oldies were graduating, the old ways of roleplaying were impossible, and the NaAT and Mages Guild were quickly reduced to legend as they were abandoned. I had to find a new niche. I did this best with the writing community - me and a few other awesome writers made a group chat and interacted on that a lot.
However, for the first year I just sort of drifted in and out of mainstream Teams. I had a couple good friends but wasn’t involved enough on Teams to really get what was happening. I missed the super famous HS Wars of 2020, the Mafia, the nicknaming era, and most of the inside jokes. I didn’t mind, though - Teams was too fast-paced for me. But I did achieve one notable thing: I was responsible for starting the NSA families. Don’t believe me? Ask my son. You probably know who he is. But in general I kept my head down in my writing group (which is actually enough for me, honestly - they’re awesome) and didn’t get out much.
However, starting in the fall of 2020, I really got involved. I’d been writing for the Navigator, of course, which helped, but then I started writing for the Bulletin Board. I made an effort to connect with people more, but besides that, I joined a leadership team, which really helped. I had to help plan a couple StuCo events and host calls. And then, the big one: I started writing a book about NSA, which I’m still working on and hope to publish this summer. To my huge surprise (and excitement), it became pretty popular and people were demanding chapters from me every week. The idea for the book was pretty simple: what if NSA were a real brick-and-mortar school, but everything, the magic, roleplays, lore, iNSAnity, and randomness we do so well, were also real? With the help of James Clay, my main character, I finally really felt like I had found my niche in NorthStar Academy. It’s been great to belong. I’ve always loved and been a part of NSA, but until this last year, I wasn’t really involved.
So, yeah! It’s been a long journey, and things have always been changing, but I’ve had some constant, awesome (and constantly awesome) friends who have made every change easy and helped me when I needed it. NSA has always been a fun, iNSAne place, although the method of iNSAnity has changed. And it’ll (hopefully) be that way for generations. There are so many different places to fit in, don’t worry if you don’t know your place yet. It took about two years for me to find mine. Yours will come!
Columns: 🗞️Staff Stories
Tirzah H. has been at NSA for about two years. She lives in Indiana, USA with eight of her eleven siblings and mom and dad. She has recently started writing for the Navigator. She enjoys spending time with family, hiking, karate, writing, and playing with babies.