As I slowly open the creaking door, my head down. I feel 30 pairs of eyes all turning to look at who is coming through the door. I slowly look up at the class, seeing what seems like hundreds of eyes all staring straight at me. I quickly scan the room for any possible new friends. All of this just taking a few seconds but seeming like a lifetime. I slowly and gingerly move my left foot forward to take my first step into my new classroom.
I slowly begin to walk into the room, turning round to shut the door that seems to have stopped creaking. As the door clicks shut, I take another deep breath, still aware of the eyes burning holes in my back, and turn round to face the eyes and the teacher. As I look up and I make eye contact with the teacher, I open my mouth, preparing to say something, when she beats me to it.
“Excuse me, can I help u?”, she says still making eye contact. I realise that she must have forgotten about the new kid starting today. I open my mouth and say, “Erm, yes, I’m new to the school today and I’ve been told that I’m in this class”.
All of the time I’m saying this I can still feel the eyes of the class piercing my back.
When the teacher hears this she breaks eye contact with me at last and looks down at something on her desk. She seems to take forever as her eyes scan a piece of paper up and down several times. The class behind me begin to get bored and start whispering, what they’re saying I cannot hear. As this happens and the teacher is still scanning the list I decided to turn around and have a look at the class. As I do this and begin to look at everyone in the class, they all stop whispering and look up straight at me. As they do this, I suddenly become all nervous and start worrying about my appearance to make sure I don’t look like a fool. I quickly check my hair and face with my hand to make sure I don’ have anything on it. After I have been looking round the class, with them staring back the teacher finally stops looking at the paper on her desk and asks me what my name is. I reply telling her my name saying, “Robert”, “Robert Luya”, when she hears this she again looks at her piece of paper briefly before saying, “I’m sorry Robert but I believe your in the wrong room, perhaps you should try next door?”. When she says this some people in the class behind me start laughing and I hear someone at the back whisper ‘fool’. When the teacher said that to me, my whole face turned red and I hurriedly say. “Oh, cheers, sorry for disturbing you”, before turning and rushing out of the door, as quickly as I can.
When outside I stop and just lean against the wall, thinking, “Why? Why had I gone into the wrong room? Why didn’t I see the room number on the door? Why did I have to make a fool of myself?”.
After about five minutes of asking myself these questions I gather enough confidence to go into the other classroom next door. Before I do this though, I see there is a toilet opposite so I quickly go in there and check my appearance in the mirror. After seeing that my appearance is okay, I begin to walk up to the door. I look up at the room number and make sure that it is the correct room before preparing to go in.
Again, for the second time today I go up to the door, looking in, seeing the teacher talking to the class. I look at the class to see who I can see, no one that I have any idea at all who they are. Again, I take a big deep breath before knocking on the door and entering the room. As I open the door, again I have the now familiar view of everyone in the room stopping their work and turning their eye son me. This time though it was not so bad because as soon as I had stepped in the door the teacher says, “hello, I presume your Robert. It’s your first day today isn’t it?”. When I hear her say this I automatically knew that I was in the right room and replied saying, “Yes, and I think this is my new class”, feeling more confident as I know that I am in the correct room.
After telling me I was in the correct room the teacher then introduced me to the class making me stand up in front of the class as they take it in turn to introduce themselves to me. I was then told that my new place would be seated at one of the empty seats at the back. I the slowly make my way to my new seat, seeing everyone’s heads turn as I walked past the, most probably waiting to see if I did anything or said anything which they could laugh at me for.
I continue to make my way to my seat. Attempting to go and sit down as quickly as possible, but making sure there is no possibility of giving the class something to laugh at, which if I do, no doubt will never be forgotten. I eventually sit down, fortunate enough not to have given the class any excuse to laugh. Slowly the teacher and the class get back to work and I begin to have a detailed look around at my classmates. I quickly get accommodated with who are the class jokers, who are the clever ones and who are the ones that sit on their own, quietly, not talking.
As I’m looking around I also notice that there is an empty seat two spaces to the left of me, but then I see it’s not empty as someone’s belongings are there, its just them that’s not. I wonder whom that belongs to?
Before I knew it the bell was ringing to signal the end of the 45 minutes, which passed in what seemed like no time. That bell was also signalling the beginning of my first ever break time. Great! I can’t wait. 20 minutes of standing outside, in the cold, on my own looking like a Larry. Great fun!
But actually as soon as I walk out onto the playground I get a tap on my shoulder. I think to myself, “O, no”, wondering what’s going to happen, but when I spin round I am face to face with a boy called Michael in my class. He introduces himself, says he knows I’m new today and asks me if I want to hang with him and his mates. I instantly agree and he takes mw to meet his group. We all become mates instantly and arrange to meet down the park after school. That turned out to be a regular patter, down the park everyday after school to play footy.
After 3 weeks of that we were now very good mates and still are. My first day wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be after all. It’s not everyday you meet a new group of mates.
