Dear Archbishop Carroll.

How do I start this off? Well, I’ll start by saying thank you for taking me in and treating me like family. Honestly, when I first knew I was coming to Carroll I was extremely nervous because public school is what I was used to. As you know, most inner-city schools are predominantly Black, so not only was I going to a Catholic/private school, I was going to a school with a wide variety of races and different backgrounds. Even with everything going on and me leaving my neighborhood, I still transitioned very well to this new school and Carroll made the transition even easier for me. 

Let’s talk about my years at Carroll. Honestly, my first two years at Carroll were my favorite years here, from meeting new people to playing high school basketball for the first time. I still remember my first JV game. I swear I was going to have a heart attack before the game even started but we made it through and eventually got to varsity my junior year. But COVID hit and that killed the Carroll experience for me. Sophomore year, being stuck at home with no one to talk to and just tedious work and not being able to interact with my friends, sucked. Junior year didn’t get any better. Hybrid was even worse because all my friends weren’t on my day so I never got to see any of them. When senior year came around and I saw everyone again, it just wasn’t the same cause I hadn’t talked to some of them in 2 years so that relationship was dead. 

Let’s end this on a good note, though, and talk about one of the most memorable moments: the senior prank freshman year. That’s something I still think about to this day — the absolute chaos the school was going through was just too funny and the fact that it just happened out of nowhere made it even better. But honestly, I just wanna say thank you, Carroll, for not giving me the best 4 years of my life but providing me with the tools to have the best life I can have — so thank you, Archbishop Carroll.                 

            Sincerely, Justin