Graduation Speech : High School

I have been going to school since I was four years old and, that means that I have been attending school twenty to twenty two years, including kindergarten, middle school, high school and now college. As every student, I had my ups and downs in school; I had some failures and some successes. One of the failures that affected me the most and that I will always remember was the time that I was in high school during my junior year. I failed almost all my classes and, I only passed two classes and with a C. In the other hand I had some really good success. The most recent one and the one that I am still happy about is getting my Family Development Credential. We learn from our mistakes and also from our successes, these two times in my life

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.

Many individuals believe that attending college directly after high school is a life changing experience This stance can hold true for many reasons regarding the positive aspects for the completion of a college degree. Students should attend college directly after high school because they are more experienced and have great opportunities and benefits rather than waiting to go later on in life.

According to a report from Thomas Nelson Community College website, 15.7 percent is the graduation rate in 2010. 84 percent of students failed to receive their degree. That’s beyond sad. College can be difficulty especially with everyday life is getting harder to main family life work and financials. Because college is challenging, I know that I have issues that I must overcome. I told myself the more patient 's I have the better success I will have. Although college will be difficult my goal is to gain the knowledge. I need to improve through my life challenges so that I won 't end up a statistic.

While a necessary step in any dedicated academic’s life, the graduation of high school is not always a cakewalk to accomplish. With the obstacle of mental illness in my way, I found the task of graduating high school and moving on to college to be a mammoth that I felt not healthy enough to conquer. In the second half of my high school career, I found myself in physical and mental states so poor that I missed approximately one third of my desk hours in my junior year. The possibility of returning to school, let alone graduating with my class, seemed bleak.

Throughout the years I have learned that life is not as simple as it is made out to be. It is filled with twists, turns, and challenges you never expected to face. If I were told a couple years ago that I would at UCF for my undergraduate, I would have not believed you. All my years of schooling have been those of great difficulty. Not only due to academics, but also mainly due to the fact in which I was bullied immensely. Being bullied not only took a toll on me mentally, it also hindered my ability to properly attend school, and do work efficiently.

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.

In the beginning of 8th grade we were asked to write a letter to ourselves explaining how our year was going so far. You were to write the letter, place it in an envelope and open it on the last day of school. Although it was a mandatory assignment, I enjoyed reading my opinions from the first couple days of school and I thought I would write one again. This week I completed my first week of high school, and I thought I would share my POV so that I could later look back on this and see how a “naive” freshman saw things.

It was my senior year in high school and graduation was inching closer and closer. My high school principal stood on the stage of our auditorium introducing me as the recipient of the Principals Hall of Fame Award. As he stated proudly “Desiree aspires to return to North Miami Beach Senior High to teach science” it was hard for me to conceal my shock. How had he misinterpreted my future plans into becoming an educator and even more, to returning to my high school? I was sure that this was all a misunderstanding and I would continue on towards becoming the Neonatologist I had always dreamed of, still connected to children but only in the first moments of their lives. Little did I know, my principal was more in tuned to my destiny than I thought. I look back on this moment and it supports my belief that education has always been my calling.

College hasn’t really been much of a choice for me—same way for walking the stage at graduation in high school. Yeah the “option” to opt out has “always” been there, but God forbid I get to make my own choices as an adult by my mother (but that’s something else entirely). My relatives’ continuous badgering, threats, and my patience running out after fifteen years of their actions “convinced” me to start to college anyways. I mustn’t leave out the fact that I also convinced myself that if I started college early, I would potentially graduate around the same time as one of my favorite cousins and one of my friends. I started taking dual credit courses in high school to shut my mother up about advanced schooling, ended up liking the teachers

In 2010, Grant High School, set out to improve (Lambertson 42-43). This school quickly went from being in the worst 5% of schools in Michigan to the superior 92% (Lambertson 43-45). This school poured effort into its programs to try to bring up test grades (Lambertson 42-45). Amazingly, Grant High School brought its average ACT score up 2.4 points in around three years (Lambertson 45). However, in the end, was this school successful? Were its students prepared to succeed?

High school teachers try to explain what college is like, but it 's hard to imagine until you actually start college classes. I 've learned that college has some similarities to high school but overall, it is a completely different atmosphere. Entering college, you will see a major change in the way that you are treated. Unlike high school, you are treated as an adult. Your professors give you the responsibility that you never had before, such as doing your homework or not, allowing you to leave class without asking, and most importantly, giving you the choice to come to class or not. However, a lot of people take advantage of not having to go to class every time but being in class is very important, especially in EN 101. You don 't miss out on the notes that the professor gives, you get time with your classmates to evaluate each others writing, you have time to talk to your professor and ask questions, you get to see examples of papers which will give you ideas and kick start your drafting process, and most of all you aren 't wasting the hundreds of dollars that you paid for the class. I encourage you to do your very best to make it to each class, because I promise it will ease a lot of stress and you will do better academically.

When you think of students in college you think of hard homework assignments, long essays with short due dates, the last minute studying for exams and of course the partying that everyone looks forward to when it comes to being in college. Do you ever think about what happens when you don’t do the homework, not turn in the essay on time and do horrible on the exams and party a little too much? When this happens, grades tend to fall and when grades tend to fall it usually means you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing, and when you’re paying thousands of dollars for an education most people can’t afford to take college as a game being played. For most students they don’t have a choice but to drop out because of all these outcomes.

High school seniors are typically in 17 to 19 years old. Because these students are relatively young and sometimes inexperienced, society often views them as naïve. Ironically, this same society pressures them to make critical life decisions. For instance, the majority of these students must determine whether to attend college or not. The students who do end up choosing college as their next step in life must then carefully select a major associated with their desired future career. Only a few students lean toward majors that match their passions. However, why do the rest of the students end up choosing the “prosperous” majors even if they are not passionate about it? The root of this dilemma lies in how society shows favoritism for “prosperous” majors, such as science, math, technology, political science, and business majors. Since society perceives them as the ideal majors and pressure students into choosing these majors. Because parents have a position of authority, they also play a significant role in this process and may even manipulate their child into choosing what they think might be best for them.

High school students in China are faced with many challenges throughout their education. Some of these challenges include taking the Gaokao exam in order to receive a diploma. The Gaokao exam, also known as the National Higher Education Entrance Examination, is an academic examination that high schoolers need to take prior to entering any higher level education in the future. This test consist of mathematics, Chinese literature, English, and the choice of humanities or natural sciences. Over a course of two days, Chinese students must test for nine hours. It is typical to say that the Gaokao is the most important exam in China for every Chinese students. Nearly every student would need equivalent to ten years of education to have the necessary preparation for this exam. When facing the Gaokao exam, students tend to not drop out of school early to avoid the test, they typically try to accomplish the test again even though they are discouraged from narrowly failing, and the students that narrowly pass the exam and achieve their diploma are more likely to be successful in China’s labor market than the students that narrowly failed to pass the exam. The Gaokao exam is a very important exam in China because it required for higher education and jobs.