Due to the fact that the people at Richard’s had grossly underestimated my abilities as a student, they signed me up for the lowest level possible classes, none of which were initially College Prep. I even had two math classes, both of which were very basic. While it was true that math was likely still my weakest subject, I had improved tremendously in it already in my last year and a half in Germany and continued to make progress after coming to the US. Both of my math teachers realized that I did not really belong in their classes, though not nearly as quickly as those in my other classes. In social studies, I quickly switched to College Prep level and in English, I soon transitioned out of the Second Language program into College Prep freshman literature.

In the meantime, the incredible tragedy of 9/11 happened. I was in one of my math classes as the TV went on for us to see the terrible news. I did not realize what exactly had happened until much later in the day. The entre Western world was rightly in shock and quickly lined up behind the United States. The Bush administration had the full support of the nation and from people far beyond America’s borders. They could have led the world anywhere they pleased. It is very tragic in itself that they chose the worst possible option--the option to play on people’s worst fears to justify taking their most basic civil liberties and to wage endless wars in the Middle East. I remember much later on, around the eve of the 2006 Congressional elections that would sweep Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the Democrats into power, Karl Rove (the infamous advisor to the president)  made one last ugly and desperate plea to voters. He did so by saying something to the tune of: “If Democrats take control of Congress, the terrorists win and America loses.” That was just a taste of the enduring ugliness the attacks had on politics in this country. We will revisit this topic in due time.

My biggest problem of freshman year in high school was that I had wasted one semester on basic math and both semesters on slightly more challenging technical-level math, which was still not a College Prep course. This also prevented me from taking any science classes that year. These two things combined would later prolong my time at Berkmar.

I finished my first semester of high school with all A and B grades and without any real academic problems. Not even the fact that I started College Prep-level geography and English well into the semester caused me any major issues. My first geography teacher seemed especially sad to see me go. I had written my probably best essay in the English language up to that point for his class. It was about the different countries I had lived in, their cultures and traditions, as well as how that affected my family and its customs. I proudly read it aloud in class the next day. Nonetheless, the teachers in my new classes were both very good too (as were virtually all Berkmar teachers I had during my time there).

During the winter holidays that year, we had our first visitors since our move to the US.  They were relatives on my mother’s side, who lived in Toronto. We hadn’t seen them since the war in former Yugoslavia, and we had a nice few days with them. In addition to that, my mother’s department head invited us to their Christmas Eve dinner.  She also invited several of her friends, one of whom, unbeknownst to me, was one of the Berkmar Special Needs Paraprofessionals, who rolled me from class to class in a wheelchair. Unlike the people at Richard’s, I had virtually no problems with their counterparts at high school at that point; therefore I was quite happy to see her.

In the second semester of my freshman year, there was only one change to my schedule compared to the first. I had a health class (which was a one-semester course) instead of the more elementary of the two math classes. During that time, my parents also found a physical therapy place for me to go to once a week. On those Wednesday nights, homework would sometimes become too much. Toward the end of that semester, my grades were all A’s, despite that. However, at the end of it, all but one became B’s .I was tired of everything then and the final exams did their part to bring the grades down as well.  One of the reasons why I was so fed up with everything was an inevitable clash with the main Special Needs teacher about what it meant for me to be independent. She defined it as me being able to push my wheelchair to classes, while for me it was walking more. Unlike in the similar confrontations at Richard’s, I did not have my parents’ support in this case. What they did not really know was this was not the only problem I had with her. She, as a strong believer in American Exceptionalism, always reminded me of how much better and more civilized she thought Americans were than “Europeans.” These insults stereotypes and quite frankly, this nationalist arrogance, angered me greatly, though I did not confront her with it specifically.

Shortly after that school year ended, the 2002 World Cup began in South Korea and Japan.  It was the first World Cup I could watch almost entirely, because of the longer and earlier summer break here in the States. There was only one slight problem: due to the tournament’s location in East Asia, the time difference was immense. For me, that meant staying up all night and sleeping during the day. The matches kicked off at 2:00, 5:00 and 7:30 a.m. during the group stage, and only at 2:00 and 7:00 am in the later rounds. While I enjoyed it, it also took its toll on me. Physical therapy also changed my routine, cutting short my sleep. It was the World Cup of surprises, as France and Argentina were knocked out right away, while virtual unknowns in the soccer world, such as Senegal and the U.S., reached the quarterfinals, and similar Cinderella stories like Turkey and South Korea even made the semifinals. However, despite all of these surprises, the two most decorated teams in World Cup history reached the final: Brazil and Germany. I remember not being able to sleep on the night before the match and barely having the energy to watch it that morning, after a whole month of sleepless nights. Nevertheless, the occasion was too big for me to miss and after Brazilian flair outclassed German discipline 2-0, I was too tired to be disappointed and finally fell asleep. In addition to that tournament and physical therapy, we spent a few days in and near the beautiful St. Augustine, Florida and I also used the summer to study the computer programming language C++ with the books I already owned, and the software I had been given a few months prior. I was convinced that programming would become my profession and that my other talents such as spoken languages and social studies would be less relevant in my future.

In tenth grade, I had six College Prep classes, including Algebra I (I had to start math from the beginning, due to the fact that neither of the  math classes I took the previous year were College Prep). They also included biology, English, world history,  a course in the programing language  Visual Basic, and Spanish I. I was unable to take a foreign language course my freshman year, because that department had all its classes in trailers that would have been difficult for me to access.  I often had to work twice as hard, just in order to be taken seriously by the teachers--and in some cases, particularly with the algebra I teacher, I never succeeded in that. He was extremely strict and frankly often made it seem as if I were in the way. I had the same feeling initially in my English and history classes too, but there I was able to convince them of the fact that I belonged in the classes relatively quickly. It is true that I was better at English and history than algebra, but the difference was not nearly as immense as it would have been in earlier years. It is also true that I enjoyed the subject matter in the other two classes, while I did not enjoy algebra. Nevertheless, the main problem was the teacher there, who flatly refused to treat me in the same way he as he did the other students. It was his attitude toward my disability that caused this difference in treatment. Given his strictness, I was uncharacteristically afraid to speak out about it. As was to be expected, Spanish went flawlessly virtually from the start for me. Biology and the Visual Basic programing class, however, truly caused me major problems, to an extent that I had never seen before in my schooling and would rarely if ever see again after that.

 In my biology class, I was extremely clueless, which was a feeling that I had not experienced since my fourth-grade math class. It was largely taught by a pregnant teacher, who lectured in a way that simply did not make it through to me for whatever reason. Toward the end of that semester, she went on maternity leave and her assistant taught the class with a substitute teacher. The assistant also gave tutoring lessons to those of us who were struggling around November and December .Her way of explaining things somehow worked tremendously better for me and I improved my  overall grade enough to  a just get by with a D+  in the end.

As for Visual Basic, it was a class I had rushed into. Due to the fact that I was taking Algebra I simultaneously rather than having taken it the year before, I lacked the mathematical skills I needed for it. I was also the first disabled student this teacher ever had and he was therefore unfamiliar with all the things that I was entitled to (most importantly additional time on assignments). Due to the pressure that naturally came with  the ending of a semester, I had a seemingly endless  mountain of work to do then, so I did not have the chance to complete a number of programing assignments, and for the first and last time in my schooling I failed a class. However, after a meeting between me, the main Special Needs teacher, my mother, and the Visual Basic teacher that lasted several hours and included some fiery exchanges between the latter two, he reluctantly agreed to give me time to finish enough of the remaining assignments, so that I would still get a passing grade. After I finished that and my grade changed, I was glad to give up on Visual Basic and other computer programing. I had learned the hard way that it was not for me after all and that I should focus on the subjects was good at, when it came to planning my future.

The other notable things that happened that semester were my great-aunt visiting us for the winter holidays and a boy from Serbia coming to Berkmar--he was on the same bus with me. We quickly became friends. I translated for him and he helped me into and out of the bus. We also ate lunch together, while mostly discussing soccer. He stayed at the school for about two years, before moving on.

My objective for the next semester was to work harder and to achieve better results than I had in the previous four months. That goal even included my strong classes and for the most part, I was successful. I took an intergraded business class instead of Visual Basic, which was quite simple. Biology was still problematic, but not nearly as much as first semester. The regular teacher was back from maternity leave and I was determined to follow her way of class instruction. To be clear, I certainly do not want to blame teachers any time I had a lack of success in their classes. That would be both an unfair and nonsensical cheap shot at them. It is true, however, that I have had some subjects in which I was much stronger than in others and it was always vital to have teachers who taught my weaker subjects in a way that was compatible with my learning style. I saw the importance of that especially toward the very end of my time in high school.

Nevertheless, the most significant event in the Spring Semester of 2003 did not have to do with school itself. It was still something that shaped me fundamentally. It was at that time, that President George W. Bush ordered troops into Iraq, a move I bitterly opposed, largely because of what war did to my own country. But it was not just the war itself that left such a mark on me. What hurt me even more was the level of political discourse leading up to the war, even in a place of learning such as my high school. A large majority of people there seemed so caught up in a pro-war frenzy, as was the Southern US as a whole, that people were eager to label any opponents of the war and/or the president as anti-American. The death threats against the Dixie Chicks are an extreme example of this.  It was a difficult time for progressives, intellectuals, and free thinkers of all stripes. This societal trend unfortunately carried over into school life.  My history teacher was fairly politically conservative and he took every chance he had to tell us about his admiration for George W. Bush and about his support for the former’s war plans. In the weeks and months leading up to the start of “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” it was the main topic discussed in class. He regularly took polls of the students’ views on the war and the atmosphere was so intense that it seemed that the number of those of us opposed to the invasion dwindled with each poll. He claimed that we who were against it would feel differently when we grew up. For me, that insulting statement could not have been more wrong.

 As an adult, my commitment to pacifism has only grown stronger and my reasoning behind it has become more sophisticated. I have come to understand that war is not just bad because people die, but rather because the great, idealistic reasons leaders give in order to galvanize public support for armed conflict have very rarely been the real rationale behind their desire for war. Sure, the American Revolutionary War, the American Civil War, and World War II are all valid examples for exceptions to that rule. However, in today’s world there is no more true colonialism in the sense of the  late eighteenth century , slavery is no longer tolerated, and  no matter how much of an attempt has been made to Nazify certain dictators in the recent past or terrorists today, there is no longer a mighty and well-armed threat to world peace and stability, as had been the case from Hitler’s rise to power  1933 to  the  Allied victory in1945.Today’s terrorist organizations are little more than gangs of criminals that should be dealt with by police action. By trying to confront these groups militarily, civilians die, which often makes their otherwise reasonable family members join the radicals out of vengeance. That is only counterproductive.

I have also come to understand that while being a major evil, war is not the ultimate evil. It is rather a symptom of corporatism, the system that makes war profitable and a fearful populace necessary. Corporatism is to be clearly distinguished from capitalism, because the latter advocates a free market, in which the same rules apply for all who participate. Corporatism, on the other hand, has a bias toward big business. While it allows corporations to keep their profits, it does not hold them accountable for any losses, as witnessed in the 2008 bank bailouts. But to stay on topic, it is the corporatist system that ensures that foreign policy objectives are not as much about solving problems as they are about increasing profits for multinational corporations. It is the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned the nation about in his Farewell Address, in 1961.

In any case, it was astonishing to see the major media, often accused of  having a liberal bias, gladly and uncritically adapting its reasoning for the war, as the Bush administration was changing its rationale for the conflict. First they tried to tie the Iraqi regime to the 9/11;when that failed, they claimed that Saddam Hussein  had weapons of mass destruction; and when that turned out to be false, they claimed to want to bring democracy to Iraq. It is certainly true that Saddam was a brutal dictator, but it is also a fact that he had a secular government, which kept the same Islamist forces in check that have been destroying Iraq ever since Hussein’s ousting.

The so-called War on Terror is a complete misnomer, because it is impossible to be at war with a tactic. Beyond that, as noted above, terrorist groups tend to gain popular support (when they otherwise would not) in areas where bombing takes place and civilians die. Therefore, judging by  that fact and by the way Iraq looks now, the 2003 invasion was a colossal failure, if one is to believe that it was meant to fight terrorism there. However, it was a great success from the point of view of the weapons manufacturers and the private mercenaries. Those who think like I do about these issues are often maligned  as being anti-American or not supportive of the troops, while nothing could be further from the truth. I know that I owe a great deal to this country and I am certainly much more supportive of the troops than someone who wants them to go to kill and die in pointless--not to mention endless--wars.

When the war began, we had a written assignment in my history class, answering several opinion questions about the conflict. They were quite basic and went along the lines of: Do you support the president’s decision to go to war (why or why not)? Would you be willing to fight in it, if you were old enough (why or why not?) etc.  Regardless of what my classmates said, I always stayed true to and passionate about my anti-war position. At the end of class the next day, I handed the teacher my very honest, yet always polite responses. As he quickly looked over the paper, he had a bemused look on his face that I will never forget. It was not only in my history class where this would take center stage, however. One day, my English teacher, who was very good at teaching language arts, went on a right-wing political rant that lasted the entire class period. First she gave her support for the war, saying that it was a struggle for “our freedom,” while at the same time acknowledging that oil was at least a factor in the administration’s reasoning behind the invasion. She spent the rest of the time explaining to us that America is a prosperous, free, and capitalistic nation ,while all other countries (with the possible exception of Canada) were poor, socialist, and anti-American out of jealousy. She cited examples of not having been served cold beverages while at a restaurant in Ireland and how everything was smaller there. She also claimed that locals abroad immediately spotted the cars of Americans  and that they would shout out “American!”, which she tried to imitate, with a bad attempt at a randomly foreign accent.

There are of course plenty of problems with this rant. First off, socialism is the concept of workers controlling the means of production. This is something that to this day has been done only for a short time in the early days of the Soviet Union, and even that is debatable. As noted above, the term capitalism is also wrongly used to describe a system that favors big business instead of a system of unbiased “free markets” that in reality have also rarely existed, if indeed ever. Beyond that, I vividly remember having had iced drinks in Croatian restaurants, not to mention in German ones as well. While it is certainly true that Americans have larger cars and houses, they also incur debt in order to acquire these items. The Euro and the British pound were also worth more compared to the US dollar at the time, which took away reasons for any “socialist jealousies.”

After that eventful school year, we went to Florida as a family again. This time we saw Disneyland and Sea World, among other things. The former had always been a dream of mine to see as a little kid, but not so much as a teenager. Other than that, my summer was consumed with small international soccer tournaments such as the Confederations Cup, where Cameroonian star Marc-Vivien Foé tragically died, after suddenly collapsing on the field with no other players around him. This unnecessary death, along with the so many senseless deaths in Iraq, really put life into perspective for me and proved that my relative lack of academic success in the first semester of that school year was not a tragedy compared to these really important things.

The Florida hotel that we had been staying at during our vacation had premium movie channels such as HBO, which my parents enjoyed so much that they decided that we would get digital cable TV ourselves. That was something I strongly supported, due to the fact that part of that programming was a channel called Fox Sports World (later  renamed Fox Soccer Channel),which broadcast some of the best soccer, including the German Bundesliga. That meant that during the following seasons, I was able to watch the games live, instead of having to tie up the phone line by listening to them online.

With the start of my junior year in high school, there came some major and decisive changes. A different special needs teacher took on the task of assisting me. She treated me normally and we soon decided how to approach the rest of the classes I needed. We came to the conclusion that I would spend one or two class periods in her room, either completing tests, studying, or doing homework. Furthermore, we decided I would have to graduate a year later due to already being behind, as a result of not having taken college prep math or science my freshman year. That last year, I would do only physics and trigonometry. They are, at least on paper, the most difficult mandatory classes in high school.

That year, I had Spanish II, American literature, chemistry, geometry, and US history. The US history classroom was next door to where the world history class had taken place a year earlier. The two teachers could not have been more different, both in their political views and the way they treated dissenting opinions in the classroom. The US history teacher was very disapproving of President Bush, but he did not ridicule those with a different view. He wanted us to know where he stood--and more importantly, he wanted to teach us to think for ourselves and form opinions that we could back up with sound logic. He taught me that there were two kinds of patriotism: the blind nationalism that I have come to know so well, and a positive kind, which is a genuine desire to make one’s nation live up to its promise and its highest ideals. There has been a coordinated effort in the last two centuries, made by conservative, establishment scholars, to downplay the revolutionary part of the American Revolution. Students have been conditioned to almost worship the Founding Fathers themselves, without appreciating the struggle that all of the patriots in the colonies went through in order to create the most radically progressive system of government in the world at the time. Even if I came to understand that patriotism does not have to be a bad thing, I generally had my views validated in the class.

 I kept the same Spanish teacher I had a year before, which made everything easier due to the fact that she was very good at teaching the language and more importantly, because she knew that she could treat me like anyone else. Although toward the end of that school year, she did something quite unusual. She tried to pair me off with a Romanian girl, who was an excellent student from one of her other classes. The girl came to see me before the start of classes one morning and, introduced herself and told me what  the teacher had told her about me. For my part, I was still half asleep at the time and somewhat in shock as well, so that I could hardly bring out a coherent sentence. She must have interpreted this as having something to do with my disability and I never saw her again.

The literature teacher, to my amazement, treated me right from the very first moment he saw me. He had a good sense of humor, but was very strict when grading essays. I liked that, because any time he complimented my work, I knew that it was genuine. My geometry teacher was a likable Jamaican woman who cared deeply about the success of her students. My chemistry class was taught by a young and somewhat strict teacher, but she taught the subject quite well and I had none of the issues I had had with biology a year before.

The second semester had several changes in store for me. Most of them were unpleasant. My history and geometry teachers had different classes assigned to them. My new history teacher was a football coach who seemed initially annoyed about having me in his class. Soon he realized that I was the best student there, however, and that seemingly by some distance. He then proceeded to treat me like his favorite son. My natural reaction to that was to focus a little less on his class, which he held against me, but I held on to the A grade  there. It was the most bizarre treatment that I had ever gotten from any teacher. But overall, it was an enjoyable class, where we watched films like Schindler’s List and Forrest Gump and where I did a Black History Month project about Jimmy Hendrix, on whom my father was an expert.

 Geometry was at first team taught, mostly by a student-teacher with whom I had problems. But he was observed and quickly fired, after his professor really scolded him over some technicality in front the entire class. Following that, the main class teacher taught it alone and my grade went up dramatically, while the rest of the class seemed to have preferred the young teacher’s methods. I kept the same literature teacher, but was moved out of his seemingly least favorite class, and then I saw a much more pleasant side of him. That year in English, we had to write our first research paper and mine was about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Unfortunately, that was just before all the vital information on the full truth of it was released. Nevertheless, I did what I could with what data was available. The other classes went on as before and largely uneventfully, as did the summer that followed. The only other major occurrence that took place was in the spring, when my parents’ closest friends from Germany visited us for a few days. Before that, they had been staying with their daughters, who lived in New York.

Along with the health class I took in the second semester of my freshman year, a physical education class was also required for graduation. The Special Needs people who helped me the first two years did not know how to go about doing that; therefore I had to take up a semester doing that in my fourth year. I walked with my walker when the other students were running or playing other sports and I did the written work normally. I barely managed to convince the Special Needs teachers to let me take a third year of Spanish as an elective (two years of a foreign language are required). I also had Algebra II, Senior English and in the first semester, a class called Political Systems.

For Algebra II, I had probably the best math teacher I had had in my entire schooling. He explained everything in a manner that I understood perfectly and he even e-mailed my mother to let her know how well I was doing. Unfortunately, due to a schedule change in the second semester, I had a very strict teacher instead of him and struggled under the pressure for long periods of that term.  I also had a different teacher in Spanish than during the two previous years. She was also stricter and more demanding than her predecessor, but that did not necessarily reflect badly on my performance there, because Spanish was such a strong subject of mine.

Senior English was an enjoyable class for the most part. A very experienced, but still quite laid-back teacher taught it. We first read Beowulf and other works of ancient literature--a commonality among many of them was that they were originally written in old Germanic languages. There was an original text of a poem the modern-English translation of which we had already read in the text book. The teacher asked whether anyone knew German and was willing to try to read the ancient text in its initial form. I raised my hand and read it, sounding out the letters and words in the way they would sound in modern German. The teacher was amazed and I no longer had any problems with not being taken seriously in that class. Soon after that, each of us read an autobiography of a person of our choice and made a presentation about it afterwards. (I chose English soccer star David Beckham’s book, which I had read shortly before.)This was to prepare us to write our own short Senior “memory books” in the second semester, which would be my first practice for this work. It should be noted, however, that this writing is nonetheless a completely new and independent work.

 The Political Systems course was also a very good class for me, despite the fact that it required a lot of work. The teacher told me on the first day that he was glad to have me there. It was especially interesting, due to the fact I took it in the fall of 2004, the semester of a presidential election. I did not follow the Democratic Party primaries of that year particularly closely, but I was still very excited about the potential electoral defeat of President Bush in November. That excitement was very short-lived however, when I saw that the then Senator John Kerry’s views were much closer to those of the Republican incumbent than to my own. It was the first of my many disappointments with the Democratic Party. The class itself went well, however; I was able to hold on to my A, due in part to an incredibly easy final exam. The worst thing that semester for me did not have to do with school. It was the realization of not only having to stomach four more years of George W. Bush in the White House, but also the fact that nothing would have  fundamentally changed, had Kerry defeated him.

Political Systems was a one-semester course. In the second term, I had to take economics instead. The outspoken teacher whom I had had for the first semester of US history taught it. I feared that the class would include extensive math, but it did not. It was straightforward common sense with its laws about fluctuating supply and demand’s relation to prices. The teacher also as always included a lively discussion of current events; he said in a meeting with my mother that my lack of participation in those debates was my only weakness in the class. I chose not to participate mostly because of the fact that his views were simply a much better articulated version of my own and I did not want to come across as the stupid one, always echoing the teacher--especially given that he wanted us to think critically and challenge his ideas.

Other than what was already mentioned above, few things of note happened in the spring semester. My English teacher questioned my life story, as I had written about it in my Senior memory book. She was shocked when I brought the necessary pictures and even newspaper articles relevant to my presentation. Beyond that, she insisted to ask a girl to the Senior Prom. Though I know she meant well, it made me feel very uncomfortable, given the numerous painful rejections by girls that I had suffered both in Germany and here in the States. At home, my parents sorted out the necessary paperwork for my paternal grandmother and my great-aunt to visit us for a month in the coming summer .We also changed television providers once again, this time switching to Dish Network, because it offered German language channels. It enabled me to finally watch every single match of my beloved Bayern Munich team each season, which I still do to this day. Just before the school year ended, my parents welcomed one of their German friends for a few days. She had been important in the effort to try to convince the Bavarian authorities to let us stay there.

I was happy when the summer came, after a very intense semester. It was especially nice to see my grandmother again after so many years. (My great-aunt had visited us about two years before, as mentioned above.) My grandmother had visited us often in Germany, but was too scared of flying to do so more than once here. Despite our mutual happiness at seeing each other again, there was also the inevitable intergenerational conflict between us. I was nineteen years old at the time and used to not taking commands from anyone, while she treated young people like little children and even my father like a teenager. She tried to forbid me to watch television and to determine when I should get up, go swimming, and go to sleep. As the month went on, however, she realized that I was not to be commanded and our relationship improved.

As stated above, I went to Berkmar for one more school year, taking physics and trigonometry. It was the right decision to focus on these subjects exclusively, even if it meant graduating a year later. The teachers were excellent; they both taught their classes in a way that was easy to follow and even interesting. My performance in both subjects was very good from the start and both teachers deserve a lot of the credit for that. I had never before done quite as well in any math or science class.

Before the school year began, my parents decided to get a small motorized scooter for me, so that I would be better able to move from class to class. While I wanted to walk more, I also came to understand that it would be more practical to use the scooter. That would particularly be the case in the future, with college looming on the horizon, and it was good preparation to start using it a year early. Since I used it only at school, it stayed there and I would gradually start going to my classes with it.

Meanwhile, my maternal grandfather finally agreed to visit us in America. He was already in his eighties at the time and we had not seen him for five years. He had lived close to us in Germany for a few years, before returning to Bosnia, as noted in a previous chapter. He was to spend December here, part of the time with us, part of the time with my aunt, uncle, and cousin in nearby Lawrenceville. My mother had spoken to him on the phone every Friday, while my aunt had called him on the weekends. We were all happy to welcome him.  One Friday, after the paperwork had long been taken care of and after he got the flight tickets he told my mother that he was not feeling well, but that he would be fine for the trip that was two weeks away. Tragically, it turned out to be the last conversation my mother would ever have with him. In the early hours of the next morning, a phone call from a relative that nobody in my family will likely ever forget woke us up. He was dead after what later tuned out to be an extremely severe heart attack. Despite having been in my bed, at the other end of the hall from where my parents were, I could hear what had happened based on their reactions. It was completely surreal--at that moment it seemed as if my entire body froze at first, before beginning to tremble uncontrollably. I have never before experienced anything like it, but unfortunately the trembling would stay with me for years to come, during every tense situation, or sometimes for what seemed to be no reason at all. Thinking back to it all is still painful; I had major difficulties writing this whole paragraph.

My aunt (who was already an American citizen at the time) went to the funeral on her own. None of my immediate family could go with her, due to the fact that we had only just been in the United States long enough at the time to be eligible to start the process toward naturalization. My mother wrote a note, which was read at the funeral. It was especially difficult for her to not be able to go.

Meanwhile, my own well-being became progressively worse, especially with the start of the new year. The trembling remained an issue and I was able to sleep only very little each night. I also had extreme headaches, hearing problems, and worst of all, I could no longer stay focused and had problems with my memory as well as my ability to reason. In short, more things seemed to be wrong with me than not. I reacted to it all in the worst possible way, by going online and trying to match my symptoms to the worst possible diseases.

When it all became too much for both my parents and me, they took me to the emergency room on a weekend, which happened to be the day before my twentieth birthday. The doctor prescribed me pills for the trembling and sent me home. However, the other symptoms continued to become worse with time. That prompted us to go to a hospital in Atlanta on another weekend and stay there all day long. There they did a CAT scan of my brain as well as cognitive tests with the help of a neurologist, still finding nothing wrong. It continued to go on like that throughout the rest of the semester and well beyond it.

I was extremely lucky to have had only two classes, and two teachers who had expressed great concern and understanding for what I was going through. My grades were only slightly below what they had been the previous semester. Despite my extremely dark thoughts about my life having been effectively over, everyone around me was determined to push me toward graduation.  I am today extremely grateful to my family as well as to the teachers and school administrators who helped me and kept me from making any grave mistakes regarding the premature ending of my education or even my life.

Meanwhile, it was finally time for my family’s US naturalization. My parents did it first. A few weeks later, I took the tests in civics and English proficiency, which were no problem, given my understanding of US history and the political system, as well as the English language. However, I had to take care of a technicality we were unaware of (regarding Selective Service), before I could take the oath and officially become an American citizen. That meant that I had to take another day off from school to take the oath once everything was in order. That happened about a month after I took the tests. (My brother was later naturalized automatically as a minor.)  I view citizenship as a welcome responsibility, a responsibility to do my part to help this nation live up to the great ideals that it was founded on.

My symptoms at that time grew to intolerable levels and I was out of control. I became so irritable that anger would overwhelm me. For example, the power of my scooter became low and I did not ask the Special Needs paraprofessional to recharge it, at least not in the manner that she wanted to hear it. I was on the way toward the bus home before it was completely empty and came to a standstill. (The paraprofessional usually went with me to the bus and then rode the scooter back inside.) When the scooter stopped, she criticized me, while I shouted that it was her fault and her job to charge it. I also got into a passionate argument with the bus driver over some trivial matter on another day. Both times, I had trouble finding the right words, trembled extremely, and was much louder than I otherwise would have been. Luckily, neither incident had any disciplinary consequences.  Even though the paraprofessional sent me to the administrator the day after the scooter issue, we were still able to resolve the matter peacefully in the end. It was clear that I had not been myself and I therefore decided to keep quiet from then on and to avoid conflict no matter what, since my reactions seemed beyond my control.

 The incredible anxiety that these confrontations had caused me also manifested themselves in the form of chest pain and breathing problems. It all contributed to the vicious cycle of stress that prevented me from sleeping at night and made me irritable and unable to focus during the next day. Of course I did not see these things that way then. I saw them as indicators of a brain tumor and I sought help from a neurologist. After he did several tests, including an MRI, he came to the conclusion that I had depression, rather than a tumor or any cognitive impairment. That only made me angrier and more depressed.

Nevertheless, I was able to graduate in May with B’s in both physics and trigonometry. While my teachers’ predictions of A’s did not come true, it was still a major success, given the circumstances. I also found out that the college entrance exams I had taken shortly before the depression symptoms took over my life had gone quite well. Furthermore, we decided that it would be best  for me to start my higher education at a local junior college called Georgia Perimeter and  that a branch of the Department of Labor would arrange for transportation there and back home. Graduation Day at Berkmar was quite tedious. In the morning, we went to a practice session in order to make sure that everything would go as planned when each student was called to the assembled stage. Another student pushed me up there in my manual wheelchair, since it would have been too steep for my scooter. My cap and gown were completely dark blue. I do not remember much about the ceremony itself, because I was in a trance-like state for almost the whole time. I only remember having been very happy when I arrived at home; I finally had a tangible reward for all of my hard work of the last five years and for everything I had gone through.

On the Saturday after graduation, my parents invited almost everyone they knew to celebrate with us. That included relatives, friends, neighbors, their coworkers, and a few of my former teachers. I was in no mood to celebrate, however. My depression symptoms did not go away, even after the initial euphoria of graduation. Therefore, it took a pep talk from my aunt in order for me to agree to leave my room and greet the guests. Although I am not the least bit materialistic, I was showered with gifts. It is a Bosnian tradition to give successful students and graduates money. The amount I received was at least several hundred dollars, which made me feel guilty more than anything else. I was also given several books, including the final edition of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. Guests came and went from that afternoon until the evening and I had a good time with them despite my problems.

The rest of the summer was quite eventful. Chronologically, the first highlight was the 2006 World Cup in Germany, in which Croatia and the US were both eliminated in the first round, while the host nation finished third and Italy won the title. Meanwhile, I did a vocational test at the Department of Labor, which lasted all day and went nowhere. That was the case mainly because I had been used to things in my life just happening and being beyond my control. I therefore could not come up with a clear goal for my professional future. Shortly thereafter, I was officially accepted as a student at Georgia Perimeter College and I almost arbitrarily chose history as my major, due to the fact that it had always been my best and generally also my favorite subject in school. Nonetheless, these first few semesters were not as much about my major as they were about the core classes that everyone has to take. Soon after Perimeter accepted me, I had to take a math test to see whether I needed remedial classes in the subject. The test was done on a computer, which is programmed to stop the test if it becomes clear that the student has the required knowledge. I finished it quickly and was amazed by its simplicity. After having taken care of that, I was able to register for classes in the fall semester. The coordinator at the Disability Services office handled the formalities in the process and I chose World History I, Political Science, Freshman English and a class called Math-Modeling, which was especially designed for non-math-related majors. Toward the end of the summer we spent a few days at Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. Unfortunately, my depression symptoms kept me in a constantly bad mood that seemed to rub off on the rest of the family.

Next Chapter: Early College, Depression, and Love