Henry

The real deal.

Henry is the real deal.

wyomissing

As a Wyomissing resident and former student here is my retort to the above remarks. The most overlooked aspect of the district of Wyomissing is its fellow borough, West Reading. Wyomissing is composed of two parts, the borough of Wyomissing and the borough of West Reading. Wyomissing is defined by its luscious park system, bordered by rich houses and mansions. West Reading however, is an extension of the crime-ridden city of Reading which often earns top honors in crime, murder, and rape rates. The citizens of West Reading are mostly illegal immigrants and other fatherless families deprived of guidance and money. These kids are thrown into a school system along with the wealthy children of the doctors, lawyers, and business owners working in the city of Reading. The high school system is split up into levels by subject. These levels are AP, honors, academic, and comprehensive. Most of the rich kids wind up filling there schedules with the most AP and honors courses that will fit; many of Wyomissing’s brightest also take extra AP courses in the summer to further enhance their already spilling over GPA. The academic and comprehensive classes are composed of the illegals of West Reading as well as the rich kids overwhelmed by the success of their older siblings. These younger brothers and sisters, deprived of attention because of the genius of their siblings, find refuge in either the increasingly popular “gothic” attitude or pose as a ghetto West Reading thug formerly from Green Street. These kids sleep through class at the academic level putting together GPA’s of around 2.1, while the honors and AP level kids are viciously fighting to join the elite ranks of the top ten percent of the class. To reach this level of genius, one must earn a GPA of at least a 5.1. Yes that’s right, 5.1 and this is on a scale of 4. To reach this unthinkable feat, one must take the maximum available AP courses and fill the rest of their schedule with honors courses. Those striving for the ultimate, unreachable goal of valedictorian sacrifice their normal summer stay in Nantucket or Rehoboth to stay home and pick up some more AP credits to slap on their résumé.

The faculty at Wyomissing is also seemingly split up in to honors and academic level. Several AP teachers hail from prestigious universities such as Penn and Bucknell, while some of the academic teachers seem to struggle with the material themselves. The honors English department is filled with old ladies over 80 who, in their time, teaching was the only scholarly position for a woman. Because of this, class must be supplemented with pocket dictionaries so that even the brightest of students can pickup what the instructor is lecturing on, and the average weekend essay for your first semester sophomores is a comparison between the philosophy’s of Albert Einstein and Simon Weil (not yet at the fine University of Virginia have I come across an essay topic so difficult). The history department contains male professors with very strong opinions on their topic. Very subtly they attempt to persuade their students to their side of the political arena. The mathematics department tends to hire former students of Wyomissing, still living of their parent’s money and teaching simply to get away from home and begin affairs with students. The science department contains bitter veterans, fired from their former careers in nuclear physics, and stuck in Wyomissing until the next position opens up in the field of bio-chemical engineering.

Athletics at Wyomissing are reprehensibly successful at a level in which every competing school is well over three times their size. Wyomissing especially excels in the “rich sports” (tennis, golf, girls soccer). This is easily apparent by the fact that the boys tennis team has not lost a match in almost a decade, and the girls team wins states more often than not. Even more impressive, the football team which sometimes struggles to find enough players and always lacks size put together 25 winning seasons in the last 26 years including several district championships and trips to states. Previous Wyomissing offensive linemen measuring up at 5’6”, 145 lbs. have lined up against AAAA powerhouses, proceeding to knocked them off the ball. Almost every Wyomissing athletic team as a deep history of success, and an athletic history could not go without mentioning the four straight state championships by the girls cross country team from 2000-2004.

Athletics play a large role in social life, which is demonstrated at the lunch tables in the school cafeteria. Boy’s tables are split up by sport and level, while the girl’s tables are divided by level of easiness. The girls are pretty, one or two families bless the school with year after year of exceptionally beautiful girls who are worshiped as demi-gods by the envious boys from across the cafeteria. It also seems that each class has one guy who gets every girl while the rest of mankind suffers companionlessly.

If you have made it this far in my rant you are either intrigued by my writing style or waiting for my point. Before I come to my conclusion I would like to dispel a few inaccuracies stated in my fellow long-winded “definitions” of Wyomissing. Never have I come across a water polo player from Wyomissing, and the lacrosse club was just started in 2006. Also the first Starbucks in Wyomissing went up in the fall of ’05. The party life is minute in comparison to the drinking that occurs across the way in Wilson territory, and drug use is less and less common. I would estimate only 6 or 7 Wyomissingites and a few more West Reading thugs frequently do drugs. Finally to my point, Wyomissing is a town not just of the rich but of the poor; not just the genius but the dumb; not just the nerds but the jocks; not just the sluts but the prudes. In short Wyomissing is an institution and township of extremes. Not one label fits, but many must be considered.

Wyomissing the home of the rich and the poor.

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