Before she became a chemistry and biotechnology teacher at M-A, Dr. Rachel Richards was a teenager navigating a move across the country, three vastly different high schools, and the ups and downs of growing up.
Richards began high school at Saratoga High School, a school she remembers as both demanding and creative. “Saratoga was a very academic high school where everyone was encouraged to do the best that they could, but they gave us a lot of freedom to be creative and come up with our own ideas,” she said.
At Saratoga, Richards felt at home in her circle of academically driven friends. “That was my natural self, definitely more of a nerdy, very academic kid, and all my friends were very serious about academics, so we proudly called ourselves nerds,” she said.
During the first semester of her sophomore year, Richards’ family moved to the Virginia-Tennessee border, and she transferred to Abingdon High School. “I felt like it was a lot about rules,” Richards said. “You had to check into the cafeteria, and I would always be tardy because I would go to my locker to change out my books. So I was kind of a rebel because I didn’t understand why there were rules that didn’t make sense.”
At Abingdon, Richards experimented with a different persona. “When I moved to Virginia, I pretended I was rebellious and I was goth,” she said.
For Richards, her year at Abingdon High remains one of her toughest chapters. “When I went to Abingdon High School, I had a really hard time fitting in,” she recalled. “It was really hard to move when I was 16 away from the friends I’d made growing up and not knowing anybody, and then be in a town where I felt like an outcast,” Richards said. “[It was] one of the hardest things in my life, because I didn’t really have anybody to help me.” Overall, she rated her high school years “a four out of ten.”
The experience of feeling like an outsider in a small, new town had a deep and lasting impact. “There weren’t a lot of people that had lived in other states. And I didn’t go to church, so I was sort of an outcast, and I had a hard time making friends. I felt very lonely,” she said.
After a year in Virginia, Richards’ family moved again, this time to Asheville, North Carolina. “I ended up finishing my high school at a private school in Asheville,” she explained.
Asheville School came with its own set of challenges. “It was a very small school, only 200 people, and so definitely felt like being in a fishbowl,” Richards said. “There were a lot of rules, but if you followed them, you got privileges, and if you made good grades, you got privileges.”
Despite the strict atmosphere, Asheville provided Richards with some of the happiest memories from her teenage years. “We’d have snow days, and they would cancel classes, and then we would get in these big snowball fights, and go sledding,” Richards said. “We did senior pranks as well. I remember that really fondly, sneaking out in the middle of the night and going around campus.”
She also enjoyed the outdoor activities the school offered. “We also would do a lot of camping, whitewater rafting, mountaineering, and horseback riding,” she said.
Now, Richards brings those experiences into her classroom. “I feel like I can relate to a large variety of students,” she said. “I’ve had experience at three different high schools, and I’ve played around with being a rule follower and studying really hard and getting good grades, but I’ve also played around with being rebellious and finding out what happens when I break the rules.”
Looking back, some advice she’d give to her high school self—and for her students today—is: “Even though it feels like you’re alone, others have gone through these experiences before, and there is help out there for you,” Richards said. “Tomorrow’s another day; just wait it out when the going gets tough.”
