F.M.

Felix Mckenna

“I love Community. If I didn’t go to Community I don’t think that I would have had a good high school experience. I feel like there are a lot of people who went to CHS for the same reasons as I did. I feel like we would feel more accepted at a smaller school like Community. And I feel like going to a school where a lot of people are like me makes it easier to find people who I like to hang out with and who are super nice. I think being a freshman is kind of learning that being a middle schooler was when everyone’s kind of silly and then once you get into high school, it’s you have to learn how to be an adult and not be like an annoying little kid.”

Nadya Matish

“I think when I was in my freshman year, I tried out for the first musical that I had ever done in high school. It was “School of Rock.” I tried out for it when I was 14. This [was] before COVID-19. And I was really scared. I’d never really done a musical before. And so when we first got into our rehearsal, we started doing a bunch of introductions. We did a read through and then we finally got to bond as a full cast. And you know, theater kids, we do a bunch of weird things. There’s a lot of strange games and movements and silly tongue twisters that we do. When people started doing them I was just like, what’s happening?’ because I’ve never really been the type of person to just go into something without caring what everyone else thought about it. But I looked around as I was standing in the room, and everyone else was just kind of doing all of the crazy movements like hopping, skipping, saying weird words and just doing weird acting exercises. And I was like, ‘well, everyone else is doing it so I’m not going to be judged for this.’ So I might as well just not care, and that’s kind of informed the rest of my high school experience. I just kind of do it and if everyone decides to do it together, then there’s nothing to lose.”