Many Bruins’ life stories are a tale of two cities; moving from large, action-packed places to our small, rural community.
Students at Bear River seem to have grown up and lived in the protective bubble of a small town, but other students have lived in crammed cities.
Corinn Blancarte, a junior, enjoys the scenery of Grass Valley but likes the big city more.
“Not everybody knows your business in LA and you’re not the talk of everybody when one thing happens to you cause it’s not a tiny school there in LA,” she said. “Our whole school is basically a freshman class there and it’s just a lot different and a lot better. You could walk anywhere from your house but here you have to drive like 30 minutes to get to anything and it’s just a lot more convenient in LA.”
Other Bruins liked the accessibility to get places.
“I went to Santa Rosa High School, it was about 2,000 or 3,000 students. I grew up in Santa Rosa,” Freshman Haley Prestidge said. “It’s more city-like there and out here it’s more woodsy. I liked that it was more city there but here I like that you can get to the river easily and just drive there and have fun.”
Principal Dr. Amy Besler thinks that a small town life is a positive thing for students and that the community is friendly and open for new people.
“Overall, I feel like small town life is positive … our school and community are safe and people are generally friendly and open,” she said. “The adults on campus get to know students personally and demonstrate genuine care and concern for them. It can also be challenging socially; a rumor or bad decision can feel like something everyone knows and will be focused on forever, even when that’s not really the case. You don’t get to be anonymous, which is better for your well-being, but not always the desire of teenagers.”
Senior foreign exchange student Giulia Seif-Ali, enjoys staying here for the differences from her home country.
“I really do love being here because people are way nicer than in Italy … and people are really nice to me and I just love it,” she said. “It’s way, way different because my high school is a linguistic high school so we focus more on languages and we only have 2 hours max per week and the whole core system is really different from where I live … but I do prefer this school way better than mine.”
