“Best Friends” Original
Three years ago, when I came to Georgia, I quickly became friends with Katie. We had a few interests in common, however our personalities clashed and I recall many times I was averse to being around katie. I grimaced when they were brought up, and wrote down how I felt in my journal, dedicating paragraphs to scrutinizing them and picking clean my thoughts on why they were like that. Katie seemed to return the feelings, often in conversation during class. Eventually, however, it became amicable between us, and as summer rolled in, we were close friends and spent most of our time together.
By seventh grade, we were practically inseparable. With 2 of our classes shared, we stayed as glued to each other as possible, until a few months after the start of school. My previous feelings started to reveal themselves, until I was tepid over the time we spent together. It wasn’t until January that I felt our friendship was no longer in jeopardy. We remained together, impervious to anything that tried to break us apart. To this day we are still each other’s closest friend, and although it hadn’t seemed feasible for our friendship to last so long, I’m glad it did.
“Best Friends” Revised
Over three years ago, I moved from my home in Texas to Kennesaw, Georgia. As I was in a new place, I had no friends and was extremely awkward around new people. However, the first person I found myself comfortable around was Katie. We had a few common interests, and we had many classes together, including lunch period. Although we quickly became friends, I remember to have bad memories with Katie. Our personalities clashed, and I found myself liking them less and less as I got to know them. They were narcissistic, but still pitiful and rude. Yet even with all of this, I remained in the friendship, and I remained amicable with Katie throughout our sixth grade year.
Then summer came around. We hung out almost every day, walking to each others houses and meeting at the pool halfway. Our friendship slowly grew and I began to understand them more than I had originally. Through becoming close, we also began to change. I became less narcissistic, as did Katie, and we became more like each other. Once the summer ended, we began seventh grade together, with two classes together. In those two classes, we were inseparable. Every day we would whisper stupid comments to each other and complain about the horrible teacher we had for language arts. Together we even made some friends, like Cass. Yet as soon as the school year had started, it ended, and we had to walk to each other’s houses to see one another; it wasn’t like that was hard, we would just walk five minutes and meet each other halfway, at the pool. It was a wonderful summer, and my fondest year of school.
Eighth grade put a strain on our relationship. We had no classes together, we barely saw each other in the hallways, and the only time we actually could talk to each other was on the bus on the way home from school. Even that ended; I moved during winter break and got a new bus, and then I never really saw Katie. Sure, we still saw each other in the hallways and we could talk when we got home over Skype, but those didn’t make up for the hours that we didn’t get to spend together every week. As a result, we had more sleepovers and spent more time with each other. At this point, we were basically each other’s family; their home was my home and mine was theirs. We were connected at the hip and almost always tried to be together even with such a difficult schedule. Along with this, Katie was the main person that kept me okay, for I started to get depression in eighth grade. It completely destroyed me, and Katie really helped me out of that.
Finally, the school year ended, and as summer flew by with even more sleepovers and days out on the lake, high school was upon us. I wasn’t ready, and I hadn’t been ready for quite some time; Dan wasn’t exactly ready either, but he seemed more confident than I was. We got our schedules and went to class and realized that, yet again, we didn’t have the same schedule. Even so, like always, we found ways to see each other, whether it be in the morning before class starts or passing each other for split seconds in the hallway. We also hang out with each other more frequently, to play video games or to just be together and talk. Over the years, we’ve definitely become much closer of friends and have decided that we will do everything to keep this friendship alive for as many more years as possible; after all, we’re best friends, and I don’t know what I’d do without them.
“Best Friends” Reflection
Originally, this was a quiz for a vocabulary test where we had to use at least 8 of the words in that unit, whether it be in sentence form or paragraph form. Mrs. Jamison had us write about topics that related to our “Where I’m From” poems, and as my poem was all about my friends, I decided to write my vocab quiz on my best friend Katie (who no longer goes by that, by the way). They’re my closest and dearest friend, and I have another reflection about them (it’s easy to figure out which one it is), so I felt it was only right to rewrite this piece.
The original piece is short and choppy, and it isn’t very detailed about the actual friendship. I fixed that in the revision, by adding more detail to it while keeping it from being too lengthy. The revision also doesn’t have the vocabulary words in it, but it doesn’t need them, as it isn’t a vocab quiz like the original. I also feel that the wording is much more coherent in the revision, as the original’s writing was definitely not polished and is hard to read just because it’s not very good. I definitely feel I fixed it in the revision, and now you get the full story of our friendship instead of of just a few snippets of one year and a little of the summer.