Let me start this article with a disclaimer: I am not telling you that you have to love this school like all of the teachers and principals seem to love this school. This story is just about my experiences so far at this school and in my life. I just moved back from Gardendale, Alabama. I was a freshman here three years ago. Now I am a senior. My sophomore and junior years were spent at Gardendale High School, in Jefferson County Alabama. Those years significantly changed my perspective of South.

This in no way means that I am saying there are no problems at South. The hallways are so crowded in areas that you question if these people actually know how to move in a forward motion. It’s easier to get get accepted into Harvard with a full scholarship than it is to get a parking spot here. It’s cold enough in this school to convince you that you’re in antarctica if you close your eyes. The classes are incredibly hard, and most of us are constantly overloaded with homework.

But how often do we actually sit down and look at the good aspects of South?

Let’s start with the extracurricular activities. The clubs and sports that provide abundant opportunities outside of the four core subjects are what make the monotony of school bearable for some and often introduce us to what we want to do with our lives after high school.

There are 67 student clubs and performing groups at South that are available for us to join. Yes, some of them you have to be invited to join or function like teams: you have to try out and make to get in. But with the vast number of clubs we have to join, if you can’t get into one there is a good chance that there is a different club out there for you to get involved with. From AFS to Youth-In-Government to Five Finger Discount to Show Choir, there is a club out there for everyone.

Aside from clubs, Parkway South offers 23 sports to choose from, at different levels of Freshman, JV, and Varsity for girls and boys. And a freshman can try out for nearly any sport and be on the team. I know this personally, because I was on the girls’ freshman team here in my freshman year, and I had not played soccer before in my life. I was, more than anything, a dedicated benchwarmer, but I was still a part of the team. There is also cross country, which is open to everyone as long as they are willing to do the work. But I understand, everyone is always talking about the great things at South. We’ve all heard these speeches, and we are all sick of them. So let me give you something to compare this all to. There were 12 sports at Gardendale. That is barely more than half of what South offers. But, we can cancel a few of those sports due to lack of funds (not all of us can have pools and abundant fields for practice). The biggest problem with the sports there was not the lack of variety, but the lack of opportunity. If you have not played that sport for almost your entire life, you were not making any of the teams. Every cheerleader had been cheering since elementary school, so God help you if you couldn’t flip like a college cheerleader. Of course, for all of you football or baseball stars, I’m sure you would have had a great time at Gardendale.

Let me also point out that you could only join up to two clubs that only met once a month. There were selections of around 20-30 clubs to choose from in all. That really doesn’t stand up to the 67 clubs offered here. There was no Youth in Government. There was no book club. There definitely was not anything close to a GSA. This is about more than variety. This is about the opportunities we have as students here at Parkway South High School to succeed in more than basic academics.

Another thing we should all take a moment every now and then to be thankful for is the counseling at South. We have six counselors assigned to us by last names who actually meet with us at least once a year, if not more. Each counselor cares about us and how we can succeed in high school and after. Seniors can go to them for help deciding on a college or a major. In every grade, students can go to them for help changing classes or thinking about the future. These are fantastic people here to help us through high school. Compare this to the counselors in Alabama, who refused to meet with me so I could ask questions about my transcript. Who couldn’t be bothered to care enough to avoid putting me in Psychology twice. How many times have you changed your schedule so far this school year? What about last school year? Imagine if you had to pay $30 just to meet with your counselor to get the changes that you need. This was not just for changing electives; I had to pay $30 to change one of my core classes that I was not prepared for.

We also need to address the most important aspect of South that we all benefit from: the rigorous classes and wide variety of classes we have to choose from. Obviously, this topic could go either way. Harder classes typically mean more homework, less free time, lower grades. But, compared to Alabama, I am actually incredibly thankful for these hard classes and extra homework. At least here we have more than two choices for each subject. The “curriculum guide” at Gardendale was about three sheets of paper in a packet.

We should really think more about the result of these hard classes. We are better as people and smarter as students. Every essay, every math problem, every page we read adds up and makes an education that is priceless. When you make it through a class that you thought you’d never be able to get better than a C in, or that you thought you would never pass, you get to look back on it as a better person. This is important to think about right now at the beginning of the year while we are all re-adjusting to the school environment and the work load. We could all sit around and think about how hard it is and how much we would rather be in Alabama and skip half our finals (seniors could skip ALL of their finals if they had perfect attendance or an A in the class). That’s an option that enough people take, and it’s an option I think about every day. Or we can just “grin and bear it” and come out as better people on the other side.

So get up and take a look around this school. It’s not a prison. We get more opportunities than most in this school, and we get the best head starts in college and life in these hard, impossible, oh-my-god-what-am-I-going-to-do classes than a lot of people.