With around 1,300 students in the building, passing faces in the hall can blur together. It can be easy to forget that everyone has an individual story. It’s the minute details of everyone’s lives that can shape them and make them human. Inspired by photographer Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York, these are the People of DHS.
“Work harder in classes,” Senior Hannah Reneaud said. “Especially freshman and sophomore year because those years matter too.”
Reneaud admits that she didn’t put much pressure on herself academically in her underclassmen years at DHS. Now that she has, she gives advice to anyone in a similar boat.
“Try to take more AP and IB classes because they are a lot of fun,” Reneaud said.
Her favorite part of this breed of advanced classes is the way of thinking. In IB World Lit. 1 junior year, she realized what IB really meant.
“In World Lit. 1 last year it was a lot of fun because we really got to think things through rather than just getting basic level questions and answers than just, ‘What’s this person’s name?’ [instead] it’s like, ‘How is this person important to the story?,” Reneaud said.
There are a few factors that kept her away from these classes, one being fear of challenging rhetoric, hours of work, and a generally overwhelming class load.
“I think that I was too afraid to actually go into those classes because I thought they were going to be too hard,” Reneaud said. “I started taking them because I really liked the books we were going to be reading and a lot of my friends were going into them too which helped me go and get over my fear of those classes. And, the teachers are really, really nice which helped.”
Supported by teachers, friends, and peers, Reneaud admits insecurity as a factor in her choices. Now, she feels more confident and secure in her intelligence and abilities. She believes her way of thinking has changed for good.
“I think that I was afraid of [IB classes] because I didn’t think that I was smart enough to take them,” Reneaud said. “Once I started taking them, I realized that it’s more about how you think rather than what you know.”
