Venturing into an all-girls school was the most frightening experience of my life. I enrolled reluctantly, began fearfully and survived successfully through freshman year, slowly acquiring friends for life.
I enrolled at Nazareth with the guiding, more appropriately described as forceful, hand of my parents. They were concerned about my safety and values. All-girls Catholic school seemed to them the best way to provide such securities. I thought differently.
Entering an all-girls school should have been like a kiss of death to my social life. There seemed to be no chance of meeting guys. There didn't even seem to be the chance to meet people of different backgrounds and beliefs. All girls, all Catholic, all the time: very boring to this ignorant 8th grade socialite, and avid fan of diversity.
Entering an environment greatly divergent from that which I was accustomed to through junior high school struck fear in my heart. Every facet of daily behaviors that I had collected from sixth to eighth grade would become trivial the instant I entered the gaping doors. I was the only girl from my grade school to ever attend Nazareth, ruling out opportunities to find other girls with similar pasts. I would no longer be able to seek the abrasive, yet honest opinions of my best guy friends. In other words, I feared that everything would change, igniting a rocket that would send me into an orbit of misery.
