At times, Liberty students can’t be satisfied—give us a brand-new school and we complain that the floors are bare concrete covered with paint stains.  Cover the concrete with tile, and you’ll never hear the end of “OMG, my Ugg boots squeak so much when I walk down the halls!”

I’ve had enough.  Recently, I was horrified when I took the SAT at another high school—and it wasn’t the test that shocked me.  It was the building I took the test in; as I walked through its crumbly old walls that looked like they were built in the 70’s, I felt incredibly grateful that we at Liberty are lucky enough to be learning in a freshly renovated school.  Now, whenever I overhear complaints about the building, I feel that many students are overlooking the fact that this new building is a huge improvement from the building we had previously—and infinitely better than having 70% of our classes located in Portable City, USA.

I am, for example, a huge fan of having bathrooms that can actually support the amount of students that uses these facilities during lunch.  I also love the huge windows in every new classroom—remember how the classroom windows used to be about the size of a bathroom mirror, and some teachers without windows grew so desperate to have some scenery that they put fake windows complete with T-Rex heads in their rooms?

Because of the construction we have endured for the past few years, we have a cafeteria that can actually house the students eating lunch (kids no longer have to crawl away into the 500 wing to have a place to eat).  Furthermore, our new building brought us the beautiful Landback Auditorium, complete with catwalks and lighting technology that have allowed the drama program to take its performances to new heights.  Ultimately, our new building is more equipped to handle the needs of the quantity of the students it houses and the unique needs of the groups within that body.

Sometimes it difficult to feel grateful when trekking through an indoor swamp infested with flies right at the bottom of a crowded staircase.  But when these really small things are the biggest focus of this beautiful new school we are fortunate enough to attend, it makes us sound like…well, like a bunch of spoiled teenagers.  Liberty has always had the reputation of being such a friendly, welcoming school, and I would hate to see this reputation grow tarnished by a constant stream of complaints.

No, our school isn’t perfect—but it is so much better than what we had before.  I for one am very grateful for the learning environment our new building creates, and it is my hope that as we adjust to the renovations, we will be able to look past the imperfections to appreciate the building as a whole.