Coming from a small town in Texas and as a new student at Kaneland High School this year, I noticed a lot of differences from my old school.

At my previous school, we didn’t have lockers in the high school so lockers were new to me. It took me at least twenty attempts to open it.

Another thing that I thought was strange was the “no backpack” rule. Sadly, I didn’t know that backpacks were not allowed, and I ended up wearing my backpack the whole first day.

Something Kaneland students should be grateful about is how relaxed the dress code is here. I noticed that students could dye their hair any color they want, and that boys could have beards and wear earrings. I was really surprised when a teacher walked by a boy with a beard and didn’t stop him to take him to the office.

At my old high school, boys had to be clean shaven and are not allowed to wear any type of earrings, from gauges to stud, and students could not dye their whole head an unnatural color.

Kaneland is bigger than my last school and is like a labyrinth. Even though I know my schedule, I still manage to get lost somehow. The craziest thing I saw on the first day of school was the intersection hallway, nicknamed “The Blender.”

Throughout my first day, I encounter “The Blender” at least six times to get to my classes and it’s probably the most claustrophobic thing ever. So far I’ve managed to almost lose a shoe and I’ve been hit in the stomach with a large athletic bag. People push their way through and push people aside.

Something that I have to get used to is having P.E. every year. In Texas, the state only requires high school students to have one credit of physical education versus Illinois requiring students to take physical education all four years.

The weather is another thing that is going to be difficult to get used to. In Central Texas it doesn’t snow at all, except for a few odd occasions where it snowed an inch. Things that I like so far is that this high school gets out at 2:50 p.m. while my old school dismisses students at 3:20 p.m. and by then it felt like you had been at school longer than you wanted to.

Everyone that I have met so far is really nice, and I can’t wait for the rest of the school year.