Tahoma High School From the Perspective of a Former Online School Student

As of August of 2017, I was a registered student at a K-12 Online School, Washington Virtual Academy. I had just finished middle school and decided I was indefinitely finished with any and all interactions with today’s youth. However, as of a month ago, I had concluded that it was time my intermission from a brick and mortar school should end. Considering that I had moved to Maple Valley just a year and a half prior, I determined Tahoma High School may be a good option. 

 

At that point, I had heard quite a few people talking about how large the student body is. Considering the only brick and mortar schools I had ever gone to were private schools, I was awestruck by how many students go to tahoma High School, and how large the campus was in order to accommodate the massive student body.  

 

My only formative experiences as an online school student had to do with the fact that I was completely alone for the brunt of my days. Completing four sets of finals, taking a few tests a day everyday, tirelessly working on biology, complaining ad nauseam about my god awful image design teacher, were all done on my own time and anything that went wrong was mostly on me. So that being said, online school poses a pretty significant difference from a brick and mortar school. However, excuse my pessimism, at a brick and mortar school, there are not that many separate formative experiences. The mere fact that online school was so odd was what made it memorable, for better or for worse.

 

That is not to say that transferring to Tahoma was a poor decision. I think the exact opposite.

 

Tahoma is very different from any school I’ve gone too. Prior to online school, I had only ever attended private schools with a student populus smaller than a few hundred. In that sort of environment, people tend to gravitate toward each other. On the other hand, at a school with a student body pushing more than two-and-a-half thousand kids, you have to sniff people out like a bloodhound and make yourself known in order to meet anyone new. I am an introvert, but I do measure self worth by how people respond to my sense of humor, so it’s an odd experience meeting someone who I get along with and then immediately becoming panicked because being known and acknowledged is a horrifying endeavor, yet it usually reaps good effects.

 

Given the class sizes, I’ve yet to meet someone who’s only life goal is to be the worst. Most people I’ve interacted with are very funny. It could be the pretty offputting sensation of being in a building with a bunch of other exhausted people at the most developmental stage in their lives, could just be my own luck, or could just be the fact that I don’t know anyone well enough for them to hate me. I’ll give it a few months.

 

Another thing that has caught me by surprise is the amount of class options. Flipping through the course packet was a strenuous activity. I had anticipated a few electives to choose from and the usual stream of history class, english class, and math class to resume outside of them, but I was very pleasantly surprised to see a massive array of classes. 

 

However, Tahoma is, for lack of a better word, extra. The leadership really goes above and beyond to prepare really interesting and fun events, but that of course comes at the cost of authority figures rattling off whatever cool hip slang the kids are using these days. 

 

That being said, technology at Tahoma also tends to go haywire when you need it most. The WiFi tends to go in and out at times, laptops are pretty needlessly complicated, sometimes the various Google products used for academic purposes decide it’s apt circumstances to just not work, but I think it’s fair enough to write all of that off as an effect of so many people using technology at a time.

 

I’ve found most of Tahoma’s ups and downs come about thanks to the size of the student body. The lively environment, the vast collection of classes and clubs, the extensive campus, the heavy technologization, and the intense involvement from the students can all be justified by just how large-scale Tahoma feels. The passion and high regard for the school is palpable, I thoroughly cherish my experiences here thus far.