The transition from middle school to high school is hard enough, but imagine moving from a one room schoolhouse to a school with over 400 students. That’s what freshman Zoey Polk had to do. She moved from Cooke City, a small town in Southern Montana. In Cooke City the school is a small one-room schoolhouse that goes from kindergarten to eighth grade. It’s a very tight knit community. Everyone knows each other, and that made it “easier to socialize” said Polk. Moving, however, isn’t new to Zoey. She said her family moves what seems like every two to four years. They moved to Livingston and not Gardiner because they are “ready to get into a large community,” she said.
Since Polk’s move she said she hasn’t really tried to make friends yet. She is getting used to the dynamic of Livingston. Zoey felt like part of the Cooke City community before she left, and although she said she hasn’t felt that yet here in Livingston, she is looking for it. After a while she feels like she is going to get used to the bigger town and figure out the special dynamics that go on here.
Socializing was also easier for Zoey in Cooke City due to the low amount of people that live there, so she didn’t really have to meet new people as much as here in a bigger place. “Teenagers are weird,” Zoey claims. She was prepared for “a crazy experience” such as a lot of bullying, which she hasn’t experienced here in Livingston. She thought it would be kind of like the movies. She feels that people are welcoming. She’s excited to see what happens here in a “big public school.”
