I felt a chill of the cold December air as I whipped open the big metal doors at the beginning of the never ending theater hallway.This was the first time I had come to theater, but certainly not the last. I squeezed through a group of giants who’s joking around made me feel like a frightened little mouse being played with by a curious child. They were all so tall compared to the kids at the junior high and some of them even had facial hair. They were definitely high school students.                               
  I walked down to the end of the hallway and walked into a large room with paint covering the floor and these huge, half constructed, set pieces laying on the floor.n The air smelled thickly of sawdust and paint and looking around you could see all the signatures of former students either on the floor, in the cabinet, on the wood pile, or on the giant whiteboard in the corner.  All the inside jokes that no one understands anymore but everyone still laughs at. These signatures were living memories.
  Ms. Seaman calls for a meeting and immediately everyone gathers around her and listens. She talks in a language I don’t understand which makes me feel even more awkward since I’m already put in a group of people i’ve never seen before. I stand there looking around at all the unfamiliar faces in this unfamiliar place, scarred and lost.
  “Emily teach Riley what to do” Ms Seaman says and so I follow one of the kids around that obviously has been here for a while.
Most of what she says doesn’t make sense so I remain silent and nod.
  Eventually, after a while of watching her unscrew and screw things back in, we get up and she introduces me to her friend Mike. Right away Mike starts asking me questions and telling me about himself. It was nice to finally have someone make me feel warm and welcome here.
  The next day Mike and I started working on doing dimension painting. Finally, something I knew a little bit about! Mike and I talked as we worked and I found out that he also had an interest in steampunk, a sub-genre in fiction that I had recently developed an interest in. He even introduced me to a new steampunk band called Steam Powered Giraffe who were actually pretty cool. At this point Mike and I had become pretty close friends and I finally felt like a part of the shop family.
  But then the next day was winter break so I didn’t get to continue our work in shop for a little while. But then I found out that over the winter break we had the option of going into shop for a few days to work on the sets and I figured I might as well go in since I didn’t have anything else to do.
  Unfortunately, when I got there I knew nobody, but I did know what to do. So I got my paints out and painted for a few hours and then went to eat with everyone else. One in particular talked to me. He was tall with spiky brown hair, glasses and bright blue eyes.
  “Hey” He called, I looked around assuming it wasn’t me since I had no clue who this guy was” “Hey, you” he said again looking directly at me;
  “Me?” I asked?
  “Yeah you come here”
  “Okay” I said cautiously approaching him
  “Hold this wood while I cut it” he told me. Hesitantly I held the wood down and watched as he cut it, wondering who this stranger was.
  “I’m Markus by the way” He said shaking my hand
  “I’m Riley” I murmured, still getting used to the people and surrounding of being in drama club.
  “I’ve never seen you here before, what grade are you in?” the conversation continued
  “Yeah, I’m new here. I’m a freshmen.”
  “Oh! Wow… That means you’re a whole 4 years younger than me!”
  “Wow really? What grade are you in then?”
  “I’m a senior but I was put in school late”
  “Oh that makes sense..”
  Then another one of his friends came up to us “Hey Trever, this is Riley”
  “Oh Hi Riley” Trever said.
  “She’s a freshy” Markus jeered, flashing a big goofy smile
  “Yeah I am” I said bashfully
  “You’re so lucky” Trever acknowledged “I wish I would have started freshman year”
  “That’s what everyone keeps telling me” I exclaimed.
   This wasn’t the first time, nor the last time, that someone would tell me that I was lucky to have joined freshman year.
  At first I wondered what they meant.  I thought drama club was okay but not as fun as I thought it would be. But then as the year went on I grew to love drama club more and more.
“So what do you guys do in Drama Club?” I asked
“I’m understudy for Cogsworth” Markus explained “other than that I’m just a villager”
  “I’m a rug” Trever said
“Oh!” I said, not surprised of the characters considering that we were doing Beauty and The Beast that year.
We continued talking as we built and painted part of the stairs for Beast’s castle. We joked around and found out things we had in common, we sang and we discussed, one inside joke after another.
  The more we all talked the closer we became and looking back that’s what kept me in drama club is how much fun we had. Sure, we work hard, and I’ve grown to love set construction, but it wouldn’t be as great without the people there. All the hard work we do just makes us closer than friends, it makes us more like family.
It’s been two years since that happened and now I know that those people, although they have all graduated a while ago, are the true reason I am still in Drama Club today. They all reached out and made me feel welcome and they all taught me many things, not just skills but several life lessons.
  All the people I met that year taught me how important it is to take risks because unlike a lot of my peers who would only come with their friends or not at all, I went alone. I walked down that hallway freshmen year not knowing anything or anyone and I never turned back. In doing so, I met many wonderful people that I wouldn’t of known without taking that risk.
  Not only did I learn that taking a risk is a great way to make friends, I also learned to become more outgoing and warm and to help people out by looking up to the people who made me feel welcome in drama club.
  What I really learned from Drama Club is what kind of person I want to be. I want to be the kind of person who makes people feel wanted, welcome, and accepted because those are the best people in the world.