Today is Day 11 of the #Gratitude30 Challenge–Friendship! I posted this picture:
In 1992, I moved into a dormitory with about 200 other 15-18 year old girls. A similar set of boys was moving into a dorm across campus. We were all leaving our local high schools to finish our junior and senior years together at LSMSA. Most of us were looking for classes that would challenge us a more than our previous high schools did. Most of us had excelled at our home high schools. And most of us, at least I hope I wasn’t the only one, were scared silly!
Together, we learned to survive in the dorms, live off 3 cafeteria meals a day, study hard, and play hard. We learned to live in a suite with 4 or 5 other girls, do our own laundry, budget our spending money, and budget our time. We learned to write killer essays, solve differential equations, and defend our beliefs. Through all the rigor of an accelerated high school and all the drama of just being teenagers, we became friends. True, lasting Giftie friends. Thanks to the magic that is Facebook, we’ve reconnected. We have our late night philosophical discussions via statuses and comments now. We still laugh at jokes no one else would ever understand. We can’t run across the street to Texaco, but we can certainly swap recipes and parenting advice and political opinions and job openings and photos of our kids!
So today, if you saw my Instagram photo and wondered “What in the world…” now you know! I’ve written about LSMSA here and here. If you have an exceptional high school student in Louisiana, check LSMSA out!
If you saw my photo and immediately smiled, then you had one too! You know what it is and why it’s so important to me. If this is you, then I’m grateful to call you my friend! (I’d start naming names but then I’d leave someone out.)
One more thing–if you’re a Giftie reading this, remember I was Math/Sci. I am still not a writer (not for Dr. Delery’s lack of trying!). If you have a blog and you’ve written about LSMSA, your welcomed to leave that post address in a comment!