Graduation Speech : High School

Day after day I had always regretted not finishing school. Every day that went by Reminded me how much I needed to complete my education. I would remember applying to jobs and always seeing that dreaded sentence saying “must have High school diploma or equivalent’’. The memory of those days still feel as if it was just yesterday that I was without education. Growing up I never realized how much I would need education in my life. Education is needed to overall make a decent living in order to survive. All of the jobs that I was working at the time were either fast food or hard labor. In my early 20’s I soon figured that there were no short cuts to success. If I wanted to make decent money, I need a decent education. I then started researching how to get my General education diploma. Since I was too old to return to high school to finish that was my only option. I remember it was like yesterday walking onto the Community college property where the test was given to inquire about signing up to take it. Everything on campus looked so well put together in my eyes. I knew at that time that I wanted to be a future college student. I felt like I belonged there, but I was missing one thing a GED to qualify for enrollment. Being in the scenery of an actual college environment showed me just how much I was missing and made me more determined to follow up on my dreams of one-day graduating from college. As I neared the testing centers door my heart started pounding. I noticed that I

Throughout life people go through so many adversities. Whether it be good or bad there is always something that arises out of the situation. One of the most thrilling, but yet frightening events to take place throughout someone’s life would be graduation. For many people, graduating from high school is an objective. It takes a lot of time, effort, and determination to accomplish that goal. For others graduation is the end of high school, and the beginning of a new chapter in life. When graduated people feel as if adulthood has begun. In the long run, graduating opens a lot of opportunities for people to thrive.

High school is supposed to be the place where you have fun and a time in your life you’re supposed to enjoy. Movies often trick you into believing that high school is an amazing time in your life and there is nothing but parties and fun. In Bring it on, they portrayed the fun and exciting part of high school cheer-leading, however they intentionally leave out the tough times high school students’ face in school and in their practices. In other popular movies, such as High School Musical the students have no pressures other than the next basketball game. In reality, this doesn 't happen. The constant pressure is affected by the grade level you are in. In high school, students can be classified based on the pressures that are faced in each grade level into the categories of freshman, sophomores/juniors, and seniors. I am here to help you make your high school experience less stressful.

My junior year I had dropped out of school during the middle of the year because my mom just found she had cancer and I was the only one that was there to help her. I decided once that year was over that I would go back for my senior year, but I would have to be a semester behind and not graduate with my class. It was a big disappointment, but I knew that my mom was my main priority so I sucked it up and took her to her appointments, sat with her while she was doing her treatments, took her home, and helped her with whatever she needed at home.

Do you ever wonder if the students in high school are thinking about going to the next level after graduation? Its defiantly one of the best ideas to make and that’s from my own personal experience. College isn’t for everyone; we all know that saying. But what people don’t understand is how far they can grow in your dreams and careers in the future. Transitioning from high school to college is a big step forward, even though; most students aren’t ready for college but they have amazing high schools that give them everything they need so they are able to succeed in their future college lives.

Four years is such a small portion of many people’s lives, but the four years of high school can greatly impact one’s life. High school ,for many people, is a time to mature physically and mentally. Many find out who they are as a person and maybe who they want to become. High school teaches life lessons that can not be taught anywhere else and that people would not want to be taught later in life. I started high school as an anxious freshman and transformed into a confident senior in four short years.

I came into this high school believing I knew who I was, but little did I know there was a lot to discover about myself and over these 4 years I blossomed. My freshmen year was a plane white wall as I was beginning my journey in high school. My older sister who was a senior at the time and a friend from middle school helped me explore the school my first days. I began adapting to my schedule and the environment within classrooms getting along with my classmates and teachers. As days passed I began feeling comfortable not only in my academics, but socially as well. I grew distant from others, I grew closer to others, but throughout the process I began realizing that people will come and go and I needed to focus on my interests. I began joining clubs my sophomore year such as an art club and lacrosse. I felt welcomed and challenged at the same time because I had to balance academics and clubs. I learned time management and responsibility and several other important characteristics from my experiences motivating me to become more involved. My junior year was an eye opener as I realized the previous years were just a smooth ride through high school and now I have to face the challenges. It was my first year taking AP courses and I took U.S History and Calculus. History was no problem even though it’s my least favorite subject, it was an easy to understand course and I felt comfortable in the classroom. In the other hand, Calculus was the slap in the face of reality, a course

I was sure when I graduated high school I was ready for college. My senior year in high

Have you ever wondered what changed and remained the same about yourself, mentally and physically, during your high school career? Change in mentality throughout high school is such a popular topic that terms such as "senioritis" exsist in attempts to explain the change in mentality throughout the start and end of a student 's time during high school. Also, on the physical side, many people find the changes that happen to their bodies in the duration of the four years extreme. For example, some people might start Freshman year around five feet tall with little to no muscles, but they may graduate high school around six feet tall and find themselves benching 275 pounds. In high school, many things change and stay the same such as your mentality towards academics and your physical body.

After the house was fully finished, my mom wanted to get me signed up for school right away. My education was important to her and she didn't want to waste any time.

It is often believed that during high school, everyone changes, wither it’s in a good way or a bad way, we all change. I was that typical high school cheerleader that didn’t care about her grades, I just wanted to have fun with friends and brush by school with C’s, but I was okay with it during those times.

The normal teenager or even preteen goes through a phase in their life when their parents become annoying and desperately want to be grown and on their own. They feel like their parents just nag and fuss for the heck of it. Though I use to think my mom was just nagging for no reason very often, I now realize that everything she told me was beneficial and that I would need it later in life.

A time where I achieved a personal goal in my life has to be when I had to take school serious and bring my grade up so I can have better future for myself. So let 's go back to when I was in High School after leaving middle I had a bad start back towards the end of middle school I was never the kid who never did there homework, projects or anything I had to do that I was assigned to do at home and kept making excuses of why I didn 't do it. After that I got in trouble by my parents we would later have a talk about why I should focus on my education as a teen I didn 't really care what they said just went through one ear then out the other. When I first started High School I didn 't do some homework and even projects assignments again my parents would soon be later be notified about how my grades were not so great that 's when it all started. When I came home my parents were waiting for me as we started to talk they were talking about when they were kids they wish they could have expanded their education since my mom only went to elementary school back when she a kid back in Mexico since she could not go since she was not able since she was the oldest of 5 siblings so she had to stop going to school because of it. My father never went to school as a kid since he was very poor growing so he was not able to to learn anything they told me if they had the opportunity to further their education they wish they could have been something instead of what they would do my mom wanted

In a small high school, everyone knows each other and every move made is scrutinized. Many people in my high school tried their absolute hardest to fit in, but for me uncomfortableness has always lead to a missed opportunity. I ran my high school. I was the kid who was president of everything, sat on the board of education and even had a little mailbox next to all the teacher’s mailboxes. Intense and extroversion are two words that I have always related to, but when the opportunity came to be crowned king of my school, I just wasn’t interested.

With regards to high school graduation, Balfanz, Herzog, and Iver (2007) followed 12,972 Philadelphia students enrolled in traditional middle schools from six grade (1996-1997) until 1 year beyond their expected graduation from high school (2003-2004) in order to understand what indicators would affect their projected graduation date. Unlike many of the early K-8 schools, the population Balfanz et al followed consisted of "64% African American, 19% White, 12% Hispanic, and 5% Asian students. Additionally, 97% of the sample attended schools that were majority minority" (2007, p. 227). Balfanz et al found that the four variables, or "flags," that had the highest predictive power and yield were: sixth grade attendance, failing math in sixth grade, failing English in sixth grade, and receiving an out-of-school suspension in sixth grade (2007). Second, the more flags that students had the lower their chances of graduating on time became. More specifically, one-flag, two-flag, three-flag and four-flag students had a 36%, 21%, 13%, and 7% chance of on time graduation, respectively (Balfanz et al, 2007). In debriefing of this study produced in 2010, Balfanz summarized the importance of his earlier findings: "during the middle grades, students in high-poverty environments are either launched on the path to high school graduation or knocked off-track" (Balfanz, 2010, p. 7).