As a freshman, Kobi took on the challenge of high school in the way a small child takes on a chocolate bar, very enthusiastically. “I was really really excited to get to know everybody,” Kobi said with a smile. Kobi came to the Casco Bay community knowing only one other person. To some people this may have been daunting, but to a cheerful, buoyant freshman, it drove Kobi’s persistence to become friends with everyone. During Freshman Quest, Kobi was so focused on socializing with his peers that he could not focus on bonding and making connections with his crew. “There were so many social horizons to strive for I felt like I would fall behind,” he said, when comparing Freshman Quest to Senior Quest. This mindset put a damper on his experiences at Cow Island. Sitting next to Kobi, I could tell he had matured from that …show more content…
He wanted his life and schedule to be automated and robotic: sleep, wake up go to school, do homework, repeat. By making his schedule so structured, he felt like it would somehow maximize his potential in getting the best possible grades he could achieve. This approach made him feel emotionally distant from his friends and colleagues, and also unhappy with himself, but he continued to abide by this lifestyle. A transitional moment during junior year was the Public Policy Presentation. Kobi received a 3.75, not his goal of a 4. He was quite upset with himself, because he had structured his life so greatly around his academic work. “This was a really big challenge for me to say in my head, ‘It’s gonna be okay,’” Kobi commented to me. This was a painful internal experience for him to let go of and recognize that grades are not everything that make him who he is. “You feel better when you succeed if you have had times when you have not felt good in the past. If you have always felt good, then it feels really bad, but if you have felt bad and then feel good, it feels really