I can't exactly remember when the values by which I live my life were instilled in my head; I guess it's one of those things that develop as we grow. I believe that in was somewhere in the middle of my sophomore year that I took a true stand and vow to live my life by a group of values I had set for myself. Like many other students in high school, I too experimented with alcohol, mostly due to peer pressure, which I never believed existed until today. I never experimented with any type of drug or cigarette. I found cigarettes to be completely disgusting and as for drugs, I was a cheerleader and we were randomly selected for drug testing so that was a big motivator against it. Even if it wasn't for cheerleading, I don't think I ever seriously considered drugs just because of what I knew about them and their effects on people. As for drinking, as a freshman it wasn't something I did on a regular basis but at least once a month I found myself going out with my friends and drinking with the "older" people. At the time I didn't find it to be peer pressure but looking back I defiantly know that it was. Being young, impressionable, and not bad looking it was easy for the cute senior boys to talk me into drinking. Luckily I wasn't naive to the point of doing anything extremely stupid such as sleeping with any of them, but falling into the pressure of drinking was enough to convince me that they were bad news. .
It was the summer between my freshmen and sophomore year that I went to this Christian camp called Windy Gap, and it was there that I reinforced all my Christian belies and realized that what I had been doing the previous year was wrong. I came home on a Christian high ready to live my life following the lord's path; my friends however were ready to go out only a few days after our return. Not knowing what else to do, and still being young enough to be afraid to take a stand by myself, I joined them.
