Graduation Speech : High School

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.

Senior year was amazing. I could go on and on with all kinds of new adventures, friends, and experiences I made, but let 's just take you back to the start of things. It was a new year, a fresh start back to school. We were in our final year. At first I didn’t know how to feel, I just felt was happy to be back at school because that meant seeing all of my friends I hadn’t seen over the summer. The year started off good. I loved all my new classes, football season was coming up, and I met the most wonderful girl in my life. Other than going to high school games I wasn’t much of a going out type of person, but I knew this would be my last year ever to enjoy everything high school had to offer. So I just tried to make the most of it. I went to almost every school home sporting event, I started going out more and enjoying the people around me, and did things I usually wouldn’t have done. I just made every second count like it was my last. Overall the school year was pretty great. We never really were a school known for winning in sports, but other than those bumps and curves I really loved it. I would definitely do it again if I could.

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.

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

Good morning, how is everyone today? Wonderful! I am glad you all are well. I hope you did your homework last night! If you did, you will be getting a gold star on your homework worksheet. Anyways, let us begin our day with the bell ringer. Please complete the three math problems that are on the board. You must do these by yourself... and yes, that includes you Jonathan. You don 't want me to have another conference with your mother, right? That 's what I thought. You will all have ten minutes, so go ahead and begin. We will go over them together after time is up. They will help us review our long division, which I introduced yesterday. If you have any questions, please raise your hand.

Your educational path has been set out for you since before you even were entered into it. First, you were preparing for preschool, preschool prepared you for kindergarten, kindergarten prepared you for elementary school, elementary school prepared you for middle school, middle school prepared you for high school, and high school is supposed to prepare you for college. But, ask the majority of high school seniors right now and they’ll more than likely tell you they’re not feeling very ready for college. High school is known as college preparation, but it is actually nothing like it. High school has teachers who are more worried about standardized test scores than anything else, starts at 8:25 when studies show students shouldn’t even be awake then, sets your 7.5 hour block of classes without breaks, and only gives you a week of vacation at most. Whereas college does just about none of these things.

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.

The teenage years a is time in which high school students are faced with important decisions and are becoming young adults. This is an important transition in life. Post-secondary education is critical, as a matter of fact, it is a credential crucial for economic success; inevitably, in some cases, it is the opposite. As pressure intensifies near the end of high school, it is essential for students to unconventionally take time off school -- not learning -- before proceeding on to postsecondary education, to ensure a promising future.

The average person has a very limited mortality, so why would someone spend most of their time in school and accrue debt that will take years to pay off? People in general go to college to better themselves and accomplish what one wants out of life. What’s better way for a person to live life and experience it to the fullest than to do the dream job they want, or have a reserve of wealth that they can spend according to how they see fit? According to one’s parents or their teachers getting an education can indeed be the key to a higher quality of life, but obtaining a higher education is a facade masked by the propaganda of the media and one’s mentors. Going to college will make things more complicated and create more problems than it solves.

As a freshman in high school, school was my least favorite place to be and I also dislike going to class. My grades were inadequate by the time I was a sophomore. Toward the end of my sophomore year I met Dawn Pollman Kivlehan who is a teacher at Fowler High School. She is the head of the ESL (English as a Second Language) department. Mrs. Kivlehan was born and raised in Syracuse, New York and lived in a neighborhood called Tipperary Hill. She enjoyed in spending time with her family, listening to music and watching Fowler soccer. She had a bad habit of drinking Diet Pepsi every morning. I remember every morning she drinks Pepsi. She played field hockey in college and basketball in her early age. Her eyes changes color depending on the clothes she wears and, then green when she’s upset. Mrs. Dawn is fashionable during the week she always dressed up except Fridays. Friday she wears her soccer t-shirts. (She really loves wearing sweatpants after work). Dawn Pollman Kivlehan is hardworking, helpful, and very beloved teacher. (I can really say that she is one of the hardest working person I know)

High school was one of the most challenging moments in my life. Not only did I have to deal with the academic pressures and social issues from my peers I had external factors that were heavily impacting me as well. During my junior year my mom separated from her husband and me and my three little brothers ended up staying house to house with close relatives. Shortly after that time at the beginning of my senior year, my mom was sent to prison. In the midst of dealing with all of the demands that any senior deals with I had to also carry the responsibility of taking care of my three siblings. I picked up more hours from my part time job and had help from my stepdad and extended family financially but my little brothers were depending on me psychologically. Times were tough. At times my attention shifted away from my academics and more so to the wants and needs of my siblings. I became so stressed out that I broke down and went to visit my high school counselor. She then recommended me to my school’s district Social Worker.

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.

When I was in high school, I would hang out with my friends and they didn’t like to do their school work so I wouldn’t do mine. We would go hang out or sleep in class. I thought that I was cool because everyone knew who I was and would invite me to parties. I started to fail most of my classes and get into trouble because of the type of people that I chose to socialize with. I would tell jokes in class about the teacher and get sent to the office.

When I was in high school I wanted to be like everybody else. I wanted to fit in and meet some new friends. With meeting new friends I met the good ones and the bad ones. What I didn’t realize at that time was the bad ones were only going to bring me down and make me skip school.

Dear graduates, just between us, tell me: are you done with High School? Are you ready to move on to new endeavors? I thought so. Perhaps some of you were ready months ago, right? Or even some of you thought that you were already ready when I was your soccer coach in Middle School! I promise I won’t tell that to Mr. Johnson or Mrs. Heilman. / However, on the other hand, that is how life works. Our life is full of temporary things. You keep moving on to the thing as the years pass.