On the first day of high school, I tripped walking up the front sidewalk.

It wasn’t a flat-on-your-face trip that you laugh about with your peers as they help you up. It was a discreet, didn’t-see-that-curb-there kind of trip that only took a moment to recover from. Or so I thought.

Aside from embarrassing myself in front of the cheerleaders who were greeting the freshmen, my tiny blunder actually set a standard for what was to come throughout high school.

The next time I “tripped” was a year later when I found myself in a class called Beginning Journalism, an experience which would define the rest of my high school career. When teacher Kathy Habiger asked me to join the newspaper staff, I unknowingly began a headlong plunge into the best accident that could have ever befallen me. I cannot spend enough time thanking the people who have put up with my fumbles, or helped me up off the ground to make me a better journalist. Journalism is by far the best tumble I have ever taken, and if I remember anything from my time here, it will be the lessons I learned in C-101.

I’ve lost my footing several other times too, with less graceful results. I let myself get frustrated, tired and stressed much too often. I tried too hard to go full steam ahead, which often led to my biggest blunders. Had I moved a little slower, I would’ve seen many obstacles before I stumbled into them head-on. Some of them I would have been able to walk peacefully around. Sometimes, though, I needed to lose my balance. Sometimes it made me a better person.

These past four years have been characterized by my missteps. I won’t look back and remember when everything was going smoothly, but when I was flung out of my comfort zone and forced to grow as a person. As for tripping on that first day of school freshman year, I would like my last comment to go to the cheerleader that giggled at my discomfort and said, “Well, that’s awkward.”

You’re right. It was. And it was totally worth it.