The Awakening :: Personal Narrative Essays

The Awakening As I strolled through the door of the old stone building of the Danish Folk High School in Sønderborg, Denmark, I had no inclination of what I was supposed to be thinking. From the moment when we arrived in Copenhagen, the concept of the Folk High School was thrown at us in many different ways and I, maybe still in a wary state of jetlag, never grasped it. When we first arrived, I could not fathom the concept of a high school student finishing their studies and, en-lieu of moving on to college, chooses instead to give up a precious year of his or her life to go to a folk high school. "A school with no grades?" I balked back at a professor of mine who was telling us of the origins of the schools, "why would anyone want to waste their time going to one of them?" It was with this preconceived stereotype of mine that I reluctantly entered the building. "Bizarre," I remember as the first word spoken from my lips to a friend of mine as we were gathered in a large group together in the school's auditorium for the opening lecture. "This place reminds me of the YMCA back in my home town," I added, trying to make a common ground with something I was very familiar with in my life. It was not that I was trying to put the school down on a first judgment, for the place did in fact remind me a great deal of my local Y. With it's small, cramped dorm-rooms, musty pool and locker-room facilities, and tiny, hardwood floor gyms, it's a wonder I did not break down in a fit of home-sickness. Through the entirety of the Principal's speech, I remember wondering back to my original thought of why a high-school graduate would want to go to one of these schools. The Principal only touched upon this pressing issue of mine from a very distant perspective. He noted how the Folk High School we were currently visiting had a sports oriented curriculum, and thus most of students went on to work as a trainer or a head coach of a particular sport. I was not that naïve to believe that of the ninety plus students currently enrolled in the school, all ninety would go on to a sports related job in their future.