Humans of Edina High School

“It’s my second semester at Edina because I came from a charter school before this. I’ve kind of been alone most of the time. Fitting in has been pretty hard because there are so many groups at Edina, more than the school I was at before. Finding the right group of people has been hard too. I’ve never tried to be at the top. I was never that kind of kid and being competitive hasn’t been a pri...

“Seeing everybody from middle school and meeting new people has definitely been the best part of high school. It’s been pretty great so far. Having someone to talk to all the time is important to me.”

“Throughout my pregnancy I [was] nervous about having two kids. You love one kid so much and you’re not sure how you can possibly love another person just as much. But then you have them, and it all somehow becomes okay.”

“I’m in the Greater Twin Cities Youth Orchestra and we had seat auditions earlier in the month and I didn’t do too well according to my judge and that was hard to take in. Music is, for me, a way of portraying my emotions when I can’t vocalize it because I am not good at showing all the time how I am feeling.”

“My friend asked me to go on a fishing trip with him and his dad. His dad is a super disgruntled marine biologist, so he was super excited to take us. They hired this fishing guide to take us and he was a super experienced shark guide. So he takes us out into the Gulf and it takes about forty-five minutes to get near the spot where he said that all the mackerel are, and once we get there he tells ...

“My main struggle this year is that I feel like I have a certain expectation I have to uphold for people. I’ve given people an expectation of who I am and I feel like I'm letting someone down if I don’t meet that expectation. I’m scared to say anything that would go against that expectation. So I feel like I'm less social than I was in the past because I've been trying to maintain my self-set ...

“My parents divorced at the end of 2012 and my dad has full custody of us. My mom moved back to Egypt to take a break and she ended up just staying there for longer than intended. It can be a struggle sometimes because [my] mom is in another country and she’s watching [me] grow up virtually. She’s not really seeing [me] in person and also we just have to keep up with each other. “To be c...

“We traveled to all 48 states in the main area of the United States. Over ten years pretty much, we drove to them all. Our family suffered from the recession so that’s how we traveled. It just became a family thing.”

“So this is a ‘TTI’, the time I was being very stupid and drowned as a child. So, this isn’t as serious as it sounds, but it’s serious enough. When I was younger I was a huge swimmer and I took swimming lessons for the longest time. Eventually, I got put on a swim team and I remember—I think this was 3rd grade or so, and this was the first couple practices in—my coach scheduled a pract...

“So you think you have a fun uncle, right? So let me tell you about mine. He’s interesting, let me start with that. Growing up, I always enjoyed seeing him. We’d pick him up at this sketchy apartment, and he’d hop in. It was the same line every time, “Hey, you goober.” I always loved seeing him, I thought he was so cool. Sometime when I was around 10 years old, I didn’t see him for a l...

“Basically, I went camping with my cousin. We had a cabin but we wanted to sleep outside to be adventurous. So, we had a campfire and a park ranger told us to not leave out food because there might be bears. We went back and put all the food away, but when we returned to the campsite my dad brought a box of oatmeal packets that we didn’t know about...We woke up because a bear came and started to eat ...

"My favorite moment is when the strawberries come into season. They’re just so sweet and tasty. My neighbor grows strawberries, so when I was little I would go over and grab a bunch of strawberries and eat them right up. My younger brother would come with me. They made me feel really really wholesome. Sweet, delicious, slightly bitter, just fantastic. You always have to pick the reddest strawberri...

"I just started school here this year; I moved from Kennedy. In the beginning I felt like I wasn’t going to make any friends because nobody would want to talk to me. But now that I have people to talk to they can help me with classes and we can do other things. One of my choir friends and I go to her house and we sing songs and watch movies. I’ve gotten used to this school. I had to get used to no...

"Going to Edina has made trying new things harder for me. It's hard trying to join teams around Edina, everyone's really competitive. It's been pretty difficult because of the amount you have to put into everything that you do here. "My 5th grade teacher, nobody here knows her because I went to a different school, she was pretty amazing. We had a space program; if we wrote an essay that was good en...

"I moved here from Arizona over the summer, so I had a really hard time making friends. At the beginning of the year I felt alone, but then I put myself out there and made friends so it got much better. I love Minnesota. The people are so much better than the people in Arizona."

"It's difficult, but middle school was a pretty rough time for me. I moved to Colorado, and I had to make new friends. [Moving back to Edina, it was difficult] seeing people after a couple of years apart and people changed a lot. Reconnecting with friends was also hard. However, I am a Christian and this experience definitely made me trust God a lot more."

"I’d just say like stick with it. It’s not always going to be great, but like there is always that light at the end of the tunnel. Earlier this year when I got this new job, I worked really long shifts and I would get home and just be exhausted. I would not want to do any homework and my grades really suffered. Eventually, I asked to work less shifts during the weekdays so I could get my homework done...

"They wouldn’t really talk to me for a while. I wasn’t sure what the reason was but I felt like I said something wrong. It was about comments about religion. It’s something that we don’t really talk about. I’m Christian and they are Atheist. We have different views but I respect their views. We just agreed to not talk about religion to make it easier. We joke about it, but we don’t talk a...

“In 8th grade. It was on the bus, she was asking if she could sit there and I said sure, and we just started talking. Over the summer we had a little argument because we’d heard our friends talking about us, and we kind of chose sides. A couple of months after that, we talked and reconnected.” “Every friendship has its ups and downs but with him and I, we always bounce back. We learned th...

"I have two daughters. We’ve all got things that we remember but I think being a father is a highlight of my life. It’s all fulfilling, watching the stages of growth of your kids. Each age is different than the other. One of them right now is really difficult, the other has kind of gotten back on track. It changes year to year with their age. Just being part of their lives, having them depend on yo...

"It feels really good to be independent, but it’s hard. I tend to become a recluse. It’s really too easy for me to go home and not talk to anyone. I can get into my head and start circular thinking and just get obsessed with something."

"I think my friends are really good this year. I think that’s an important part of life in general, just because a lot of things are maybe going to go wrong, but your friends are always going to be there for you."

"Someone very important to me and the Muslim community died two days ago. He was diagnosed with cancer and was only given seven months to live, but he made the most out of it and was a really big symbol of perseverance to us all. I knew him well, he was such an inspiration to me and it really hurt a lot when he passed."

"One example of a struggle for me is opening up to people. I was a wallflower as a kid. I was totally introverted. Learning to be trusting of people outside of my circle of friends and being accepted by my peers and different cliques and learning to be more accepting of myself." "The happiest moment of my life was when I got married, actually. I [had gotten] a family of my own, wasn’t living ...

“This year my grandpa died. That was pretty heartbreaking. He was old, but it was...my first death so it was hard to see that. Seeing him die. It was sad.”

"Snowboarding is hard...it’s kind of intimidating when you’re going off of big jumps or ramps or snow, you’re always risking breaking a bone. I guess that’s scary...there’s been moments where I’ve accidentally taken an edge off of a jump or something and I’ve been completely not in control of my body in mid-air, and it was scary. I could have died."

"Don’t wait, just do your homework now. Don’t be afraid to ask your teachers for help, and don’t blame it on your teachers if you're not doing well. Everyone has their struggles, so you need to just do what you can. It’s not your teachers' fault. "I don’t really understand [geometry] that well. It has been my first time in a class that I haven’t really understood. Normally, when I g...

"I decided to bring cookies as a final send-off to the [Gay Straight Alliance], which has been a big part of my life the past three years. I wasn’t going to join GSA when I first started sophomore year, I just came for the snacks, but it ended up being a pretty important part of my life just because of that sense of community."