Gabrielle Mowl Reflection

I’ve been lucky enough to have experienced a tremendous amount of success and opportunity throughout my life. I had always performed well in school, I took advanced courses, I got into the private high school my mother went to, and because my parents owned a little Thai restaurant since I was four, I had an extracurricular that taught me people skills and offered me more work experience than any of my peers had. When I realized that I was exceeding the expectations of my parents and those around me, I became content with not reaching my full potential. It was until much later that I realized that adopting that mindset was where I went wrong. When my high school decided not to accept me into the National Honor Society during my junior year, I was devastated.

2016, the year of change. My life suddenly turned upside down, inside out, and thrown all around. Over the whole year, I went through a multitude of events which helped me define myself.

I worked just as hard, yet my test results were notably underwhelming in comparison to my ‘top 10’ classmates. What was different about me, I thought every night before I fell asleep. Then I realized, I was alone in my cherishment of extracurricular activities. While my classmates were up late Friday nights studying, I was cheering on the sidelines, exerting myself to pep up the crowd via backflips. When others were reading ahead, I was helping to feed outlying communities. While the ‘top 10’ was still cramming, I was at a Wednesday worship program. I’m committed to giving my complete impetus to everything I take part in, and sometimes, your best isn’t enough for what you want and there is almost nothing you can do about it. This taught me that in order to be truly fulfilled, you need to accept failure as part of your life and learn to move on. Thinking about it, I would not be happier if I quit doing the things I love to study more so that I could be in the ‘top 10’. In fact, I would most definitely be more miserable. Learning to accept failure, I have decided to cultivate my energy into simply giving my all and to welcome whatever rank, or not, I receive with open

Even after making the transition to Deer River High School in sixth grade, I continued to glide through school. My pattern of being underchallenged continued until I discovered College in the Schools classes this past fall. Finally, I was challenged (perhaps at times even more so than I imagined,) and I’ve grown exponentially in the past academic year. However, I feel as if that exponential growth is reaching its capacity in this specific environment. Becoming a part of the College of St. Scholastica’s academic environment would allow me to begin a new pattern of exponential growth both as a student and as a person.

This year has been one of the most significant of my life so far. I feel that about every year, but I think that 2016 is a record breaker. I’ve gotten my anxiety more under control, and I feel confident and comfortable in my skin. School-wise I’m still a mess. I’m still trying my best but not doing as well as I hoped, but soon all these grades will be meaningless and I can finally be free.

For starters, ever since my freshmen year my fellow leaders educated me on the importance keeping my grades up in order to receive the GPA I hoped my parents, teachers and colleges to look at. Never did I realize that balancing grades, extra-curricular activities, a job and maintaining a social life was not as easy as they made it appear through their joyful expressions. In order to stay

My name Mckayla Guerra and today I am going to tell you about myself. I’m really shy until i get to know you and then I am more opened. I love to read I have read over 6 books this year. I hate when people call me a book nerd because I not. During my childhood i lived out in the country and I was an outdoor kind of person, I never liked to be in the house. Until I moved in 7th grade more into town and now i hate being outside because there’s nothing to do. Sports is what i do like softball and track. I also love little kids and enjoy working with them and helping them out.

Winnie the Pooh once said, “You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”. This is very true for the year that I have had. This year has been crazy, fun, stressing, creative, and educational all wrapped into one.

On Tuesday, March 1st I had the honor of attending Toni Preckwinkle’s discussion on Cook County’s progress towards improving public safety and health. Toni Preckwinkle is the Cook County board president and had much knowledge to share with Benedictine faculty and students. She started off talking about public safety and information about cook counties jail. I was shocked to hear that there are ten thousand inmates in cook counties jail as of 2013. Out of the ten thousand many of them are held for nonviolent crimes. She claimed the reason for there being a large amount of inmates is because people do not have enough money to bail themselves out of jail before their hearing. Due to some of them not having enough bail money, they spend many unnecessary

I actually didn't know there is a poetry center in the Humanities building before the Author Reading. This was my first time attend this type event and I was impressed by the entire setup, including the light refreshments. Four different authors presented their pieces on that night and each of them revealed his or her personal insights in various ways. Two of the writers I remembered the most were Sarah Azzara and Mira Dougherty-Johnson. The way of their reading portrayed a very picture to all the listeners as well as helped us see their individual connections to the story. During Ms. Sarah’s reading, her imagination gave the readers the “experiences” of how baby live in mother’s womb to the time of the birth. Even though it was a fiction piece, her choices of words made the entire writing so vivid to me.

Four AP’s. 4.42 GPA. 27 A’s. These numbers define me. I have destroyed myself in pursuit of these digits, and no words could effectively describe their importance to me. There are plenty of us. We, the kids who stay up past midnight rereading our essays, miss parties and games to polish our Spanish projects, and bombard our teachers with simple questions on vocabulary quizzes. But is it worth it? Some days I can feel myself cracking. The pressure of perfection is suffocating, and I silently scream for freedom from the bondage of my black backpack’s straps. What if there was more to life than the pursuit of sublimity?

In society there are many contemporary issues that affect almost, if not every student. Our society expresses the importance of having the perfect numbers, whether it be the 4.0 grade point average to things such as the 140 pounds we “should” weigh. Though we drill these beliefs into the minds of students today, we still attempt to convince students to do the opposite, to be who they are and try their best, yet still letting these numbers define us. During a college application, students are picked apart by their SAT scores, grade point averages, grades and even income. This issue of numbers defining a person, especially students particularly bothers me because we come from a very delicate generation with different obstacles every day that

Annie Dillard is very self reflective in both of these pieces of writing which is a rare phenomenon. Having made my own judgements of her and her writing based on her moth essay, my views were greatly changed after reading her reflection of her own work. Although I picked up on various bits of symbolism and reflection I had not pieced together the religious aspect of the writing nor the moth as a symbol of herself. In the essay I felt a lack of passion. Her talk of emptiness, loneliness, and death, especially set at parts in a bathroom, sets a bleak, desolate mood. The why behind this talk of emptiness reveals her passion. She is passionate enough about her work, about her writing and God, to allow it to take up her life and hollow her out

Upon entering high school, I made a goal to myself: I wanted to become a better version of myself, realizing my own strengths and weaknesses and, ultimately, preparing to be a part of a completely different atmosphere beyond high school and even college. From the beginning, I knew I was going to find a way to improve academically, as a member of Kingsway’s STEM Academy and Superintendent’s List throughout my high school career. However, I would never think that I, as an eighth grader, would ultimately rise above my classmates, eventually being third in my class freshman year and still enjoying the rigor of taking as many AP and Honors classes as I possibly could fit in my schedule. By being recognized and awarded for my achievements, I finally realized that being this type of student, one that strives to do the best and remains self-motivated no matter what difficulties are faced, gives me a purpose as student and overall enjoyment.

When a New Year approaches, we all seem to get out a pen and start writing down our resolutions. While I am guilty of doing this myself, often trying to improve myself by forming new habits or setting new goals, one has to wonder when it becomes more important to consider of what to let go of rather than what you need to add to your life. 2015 was a great year for our family but it was also very challenging, one with many tears and anxiety. I’m kind of excited to start fresh with 2016 just around the corner. With that in mind, instead of adding resolutions and to-do’s for the new year, I’ve decided to take my own advice and let go of things for the new year.