Recently Caity wrote a blog about whether or not classes can be family… and it made me want to write about my experience in that dreary, dimly lit, white-walled, would-be depressing, corner room. Room 532.

The school year began the same way they always had… except I was one year older and could offically be on the ’senior’ teams. When I walked into room 532 for my Canadian Literature class I saw a group of people with whom I rarely spoke and only a few I called friends. I expected to hate dragging my feet up those stairs and walking into room 532. But I didn’t.

Let me rewind for a second and take you back to junior high… not that you’ll want to visit the me I was then, but it’s important. Junior high was a hilarious atrocity. Between the endless pimples and the ever-changing body it’s hard to come out on top. However… I managed. I was pretty cool in grade six and seven, but it came with a price… I was a total bitch. I was one of those girls that flicked her hair over her shoulder, flirted with far too many boys and should’ve been voted most-likely to give you the stink-eye in between classes. So I had pretty much grown out of this phase by grade eleven. I wasn’t really a chronic hair flicker and managed to save my flirting for a select few . The eye I frequently gave was rather sweet-smelling and all in all, I was less of a bitch. When I walked into room 532 on September 4th, 2006, I liked myself, hated who I used to be, and considered myself to be a pretty decent person.
But I could’ve walked into room 532 the same girl I had been in junior high and came out as the exact same person I am now. It was my grade eleven year and that stupid jail-cell room that made me who I am today.

The people in room 532 were all very different. We had different friends, different interests, different personalities. We were shoved together in that room forced to spend the rest of our school year together. The course was called Canadian Literature, the teacher Ms. Wright. I can honestly say that I have cried more, laughed harder, and learned more in that class than I ever have before. That room had a way of bringing its 17 (17, right?) occupants together in the most fascinating way.
I have 532 and the book Crow Lake to thank for that incredible year. The first book we read – Crow Lake – sparked enough discussion to bring our class together. For some reason those dreary walls, horribly uncomfortable desks, and windows that blocked out every single ray of sunlight seemed to make you want to share your life with complete – or almost complete – strangers.

I have an appreciation for every single person in that class because I do believe that they have all been incredibly important in my life and have moulded me into, well, me. I think without room 532 I could have easily let myself walk back down the path of hair-flipping and stink-eye-giving. It was in this class that I came to terms with the person that I was and promised myself to never be that person again. This class let me cry for the first time in one year. It was in this class I learned to accept people as they are. It was in this class I sincerely apologized to someone I had unknowingly hurt in my junior high days. This class let me listen to others in a way I never had before. This class helped me appreciate the little things in life. It was in this class I realized that my life isn’t as bad as I thought. This class showed me what I wanted to do with my life. This class gave me the courage to speak freely.

To the people reading this who were in that room… thank you for changing me. Because no matter how much I liked the person I was when I walked into that room, I love the person I left as. I’m happy to have left a piece of me behind in that room and even happier to have taken a piece of everyone else with me.

Between the circle of desks that held in our deepest secrets and let out our deepest emotions and the always hilarious moments I could expect in that class, what I thought would be a terrible year and a terrible decision turned out to be the best decision I could’ve ever made.

But enough about me. What I really wanted to say was thank you to everyone who was in that class, share an experience and ask you guys… can you pinpoint a moment in your life when you were absolutely changed? Was there a year, a month, a week, a day, an hour, a minute of your life that changed the person you are today? Why?