Cody Campbell, Senior, 17 

How do you feel about school? 

“It depends on the day. I have night school so I’m usually pretty tired by the end of the day, and then I have to do all my homework. I stay up until 2 am, and wake up four hours later. So right now I feel like school is a raging hell fire of depression and anger where I just want to punch someone in the face.” 

Do you think school affects your personality? 

“It does, it really does. I’ve become agitated and stressed out. I started losing a bit of hair due to all the amounts of stress I’m dealing with right now.”

Would you say you’re satisfied with who you are right now?

“Yeah I am. I’ve been through so many things throughout my entire life, to know who I am.”

What’s the saddest moment in your life? 

“Elementary school was the worst part of my years. Kids can be evil and cruel. I used to have this really gnarly scar because I had a cleft lip and people would just come and talk and laugh about it. People called me names and it pushed me down emotionally. It sucked. Those five years were the worst part of my life.” 

How do you deal with all these opinions? 

“It was the Campbell family method, where you just bury them deep down. Eventually, come the time of sixth grade, I thought things would start fresh, but it created a rage inside of me when people called me names again.”

What’s a happy moment in your life?

“I live by a motto: You don’t have to be rich, you just have to have rich friends. My friends would take me to San Francisco to eat these nice five-star gourmet foods. Vacation with them was great. During the summer we would take a boat and go to Catalina to surf and dive. I even saw a shark one time.” 

What are your goals after high school?

“That is now the fear of the year. I’m not going to lie to you. I am not prepared for the world, they have not taught us anything that we could use in the real world. How do you pay taxes? How does healthcare work? I have no idea, and I’m about to go into a world that doesn’t care if I do or don’t. And that’s terrifying, but I think I will go to a community college, then transfer to a university.” 

What is the best advice someone has given you?

“The best advice I got was when I was a kid and it’s stuck by me for years. Life doesn’t care what you think. No matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you try to succeed, life is going to kick you in the face.”