Katie was a smart, quiet girl who sat in front of me in Mr. Yaracs' dual enrollment physics class at Baker County High School. I was awful at physics-and since Mr. Yaracs and I had a friendly relationship, he was always picking on me for this. (By some miracle my senior year I won the science department award-haha I laughed in his face!!) But Katie was just the opposite of me. That girl was SMART. Problems that would take me 2 hours to do and I would still miss were things she could do in 2 minutes and be right down to the precise details. Mr. Yaracs adored her-and with good reason! I remember the day he made her announce to the class that she had been accepted into one of University of Florida's school of medicine with a full-ride scholarship. I thought that this girl had it all!
That Tuesday when I saw Katie, I remember that I had a SUPER clumsy moment and accidentally hit her with my backpack!! "Sorry!" I cried sheepishly. Since Katie was a nice girl, most of the time she would have probably just smiled and said "It's okay." But I noticed something was wrong when she just frowned and proceeded to say nothing the entire class period. She seemed really depressed. I hoped everything was okay.
But I knew that nothing was okay when I walked into my government class the next morning. Instead of hearing the all-too familiar noises of chatter and laughter under our carefree teacher Mr. Harvey, everyone was dead silent. People had their phones out, texting and calling people. A few of my classmates were in tears. I turned to Debra, the girl who sat next to me and asked her what was going on.
"Katie Kirkland killed herself last night," she said.
"No," I whispered, unable to grasp what was happening.
The rest of that day was a blur. I remember watching Mr. Harvey cry, which I never dreamed I would see. Before walking into Mr. Yaracs' class, a group of us students got together and prayed before we had to stare at Katie's empty desk. We just spent the next two hours sitting together as a class in tears and talking about how we couldn't understand why Katie was so unhappy or what we would have done if we had known what she was going through. I remember sittting there thinking, "No young person should ever have to feel unloved again. Everyone needs to know that they are valuable and they are worth something."
The months passed on and Katie still remained in my memory. I was angry at myself for not trying to be her friend. I was angry at her for shooting herself when she had so much to offer. But most of all, I was angry at God for putting circumstances in Katie's life to lead her to feel like death was the only way out of her pain.
Finally, God spoke to me on the beach towards the end of that summer when I had just returned from working at Camp Crestridge for Girls. I was praying about my future, and somehow it just all made sense. Perhaps Katie died to show me that I was meant to be a high school teacher to show teenagers how valuable they were and to not let anyone else make the same mistake Katie made. Using my love of Spanish language/culture, I would teach students not only that they were valuable, but other people's language and culture were, too. Sure enough, three years later I am majoring in Spanish and minoring in education at Florida State University for that very purpose.
Katie's death changed my life, there's not a doubt in my mind about that. When I teach, I know that I will forever have her in the back of my mind and will remind myself that I am teaching for Katie, that other students may know what she was never able to grasp: her value. Katie has certainly changed my life for the better, and as it was said at her graduation, "because I knew her, I have been changed for good."
Katie's graduation picture (http://www.legacy.com/guestbook/gainesville/guestbook.aspx?n=katherine-kirkland&pid=126022819&cid=full)
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