High school sucked. There's no doubt about that. For most of high school, poetry was a way to create memories of both good and bad. Why I did this in my poetry I'm not quite certain. In the process, I interlaced bits and pieces of my autobiography into my scribings. Perhaps these were my first attempts in developing a philosophy on my own and looking for a way to forge my own path. For some time, I was stuck between my desire for philosophical independence and the typical teenage modes of thought. This battle persisted from my freshman year through my junior year, and that's the timeframe for most of these poems. My voice may be weak and sometimes I teeter on unoriginality, but in the midst of this battle, my strongest traits began to form. They first took on the form of poetry before they became an ingrained part of me.