"My name is Karina, I live in Freeport, the main demographic that lives in Freeport is minorities, and I am a part of that group. I went to Freeport High School and it was relatively close to me so I was a commuter. When I was a freshman, my older sister was a junior. It was really cool going to school with my sister because I looked up to her in a lot of ways. I had a good experience going to high school there. I was with a lot of people who looked like me, who were part of the same community as me. Even teachers I could relate to them more. A lot of my friends were white people which was weird because I consider myself to be a very cultured person and my culture is very important to me, and I was definitely able to meet and befriend a lot of people of different backgrounds. My school was primarily minorities but I was friends with most of the white people in my grade, ironically enough. I was worried about seeming whitewashed to other people in the school who were not white because I had those friends, but I do not think it ever became a problem. After my sister's junior year, my mom wanted us to switch to Catholic school to get a better education and have a better learning environment because our school did have some things that I do not agree with that made it less of a productive school environment. My mom wanted us to be in a school without those things. We had no interest in going, and there I would definitely be sticking out as a minority and I am not sure how that would have affected my school environment. I am glad I was able to go through all of Freeport High School.
Sports was a big thing at our school, so people were kind of separated into cliques by those teams. But with our lacrosse team, I feel like we would stick out because we were a very diverse team, whereas these other teams that we would play would be predominantly white, but I feel like it made us stand out in a good way because we were really good.
Majority of people in my school can speak Spanish, and it was so cool that I could communicate with people in a different language and it felt so normalized. It was not considered weird at all. Even our staff is pretty diverse, which can be rare, but I feel like it helped me excel in school, not only because of the academic tools given, but I felt very supported by the staff. Being someone who comes from a Hispanic background, I felt like I was able to get a lot of opportunities when it came to scholarships, but that said, those were very competitive when it came to applying to college because pretty much everyone there was able to have those same opportunities. Overall, I cannot imagine a different high school experience somewhere else."
Back to Freeport