My High School was a private school located in a small town in Rhode Island. The school was small, so small that I know everyone’s name in my grade and some in others. My High School has a long history that was more than a hundred years old. Long history made this school have more traditions than others. These traditions meant different things to the school and us. One of the traditions, that was special to me was ringing the bell in the school’s chapel.
The bell rang many times during a day: in the morning, while we were eating breakfast, during the class if some alumni come back to visit, and when the school day was over. We always heard the sound of the old bell from the little chapel. The sound of the bell was extremely loud that the entire campus could hear it. I was annoyed by the bell when I was in High School. During class or an exam, the sound of the bell ringing could be very disrupting. I used to think that the tradition should be eliminated. However, my mind changed after graduating from high school. I started to miss the sound and realized the significance of the tradition.

The bell’s ringing represented the beginning and ending of a day; that was why the sound was essential to my life. When I was in High School, I never noticed the importance of the bell’s sound. For me, it was just a noise that I could hear every morning. However, after I became a college student, I never heard the sound again and realized the difference in my life. In the past, I would wake up and go to school every day at the same time, following the schedule the teachers provided, and then school ended around the same time again. However, everything was different in college. Every day I had a different schedule, and no one was there to remind me what to do. It was hard for me to adjust to this new life and I began to miss the sound of the bell. I do not have to wake up early every morning and begin school at the same time. I enjoyed this privilege of being a college student, and then the bad consequences of not having the bell to remind me of the time had come to me. I suddenly realized why ringing the bell was so important to me. It meant one day had begun, and I needed to start working now. The bell was always ringing in my head to remind myself to work hard and not be lazy.

As one of the alumni, ringing the bell gave me a sense of purpose and strengthened the ties to this school. Another time when we would ring the bell, was when some alumni were coming back. Students are not just coming back to visit their friends or teachers, but they are delivering a message to the students in High School right now. It told them one day that they would leave this place and move on to the next stage of their life. This was also the message that the tradition wanted to deliver. The alumni were coming back with new experiences and knowledge. It also motivated me to keep working hard in the university.

Tradition was something that was very important in our lives. It connected the people from now to people from the past. It always contained messages for the people in the future. While to most, the ringing of the bell could be a very annoying thing to experience, it is a proud tradition that many miss once they were gone, so I hope in the future I can get a chance to go back there and ring the bell.