Graduation Speech : My Educational Journey

High school was definitely a struggle. I attended Brookside High in Sheffield Lake, Ohio. My life consisted of studying to keep a good GPA and being an athlete. All through high school I was a varsity athlete. My freshman year I studied so much that sometimes I felt like I had no life. I kept in mind what my goals were and to not give up. Sophomore year was a little rough, I had a teacher that did not like me very much and I always had it in my mind that he wanted to fail me on purpose.The class was History and was by far my weakest subject. I had a little downfall my Sophomore year with school and sports. I did not do so well in my sports and definitely lacked confidence in my grades. My motivation was gone, but I knew what needed to be done

During high school, I feel that I’ve grown a lot as a person. Even though I still have a significant amount of growth left to do in college, my family, religion, community, and the various experiences I’ve had in high school have allowed me to mature and become a more enlightened person.

While I continued through elementary. It seemed like I was stepping into a boxing ring every time and would take a beating. Reading and writing would emotionally drain me at times. The stress would get the best of me and I would convince myself that I wasn’t smart enough to be there. This type of negative self doubt would cause myself to get failing grades, causing me to miss out on school field trips and activities. One in particular, I missed my eighth grade dance! That dance was supposed to be something special. I was planning on asking this beautiful girl to go with me. Later on found out she was moving away to San Diego, California. These opportunities come and go, but this one gave me motivation to become more involved with reading and writing.

One thing is for certain, high school wasn’t that easy. One must find what works for them throughout their four years of high school if they are wanting to graduate and go onto college. There are many positive aspects about being a high school student such as, meeting new people, learning material you will use in your later life, and having fun. However, there are some negative aspects about high school made me learn, and not necessarily the easy way. I’ve learned many things throughout high school but the most important are, time management, motivation, and work ethic.

As a child, I was never at the top of the class, but I was not at the bottom. I was an average student, my issue is that I was very lazy and did not practice the skills I was being taught consistently. I had the ability to pick things up very fast, but I never used that skill to my advantage. I would never reach the next step of whatever was taught because I did not practice at home; I did the bare minimum, which was simply doing the homework, thus I was never the top student and cheated myself from gaining more knowledge. The problem with me was that school was not so appealing to me, I enjoyed some of the fun, learning activities that my teachers would do once in a while, but the problem was they did not have the sufficient time to always conduct fun activities that some students need in order for them to stay engaged and it did not help that I 'm a boy and love to play sports and was only looking forward to recess and PE because I was able to play. Even with that, I was able to come away with slightly above average grades throughout elementary.

To begin my educational journey I wouldn’t really think it was a lot until further I got into school with a lot of things. Elementary was easy for me I only got one F. I was upset about it but never knew about it because my mom never showed me my grades until I was older. Which it didn’t really matter to me at that time when I saw them then because it had already passed. Junior High I started to slack off I didn’t want to do anything, of course I had to if I didn’t then I would fail my classes and not move on to the next grade. Then High school started I would say I did alright but I definitely could’ve done better.

II. Main Point (state as a single declarative sentence): The progress that I have made helped me lead up to writing well-developed essays. The main reason I believe my essays are improved because of the time I take on my pre-writing.

During our lives, most of us have hated getting up early. Whether we as humans enjoy mornings or not, we’re always looking forward to that unforgettable day. That special is high school graduation for me. Graduation is a ceremony that recognizes students that have excelled through school. Graduation was one of the best days of my life, perhaps even better than the day that I started college. There is no other day like graduation where there comes this feeling of success, achievement, and excitement.

Literacy has always been a huge part of my educational journey. Starting in Pre K, I was required to write and illustrate a book each year up until the 6th grade. We could write and draw any and everything we wanted. These books were not graded nor did they have any affect as to if you were to be promoted to the next grade or held back, but rather for teachers to review and see our improvements over that year. The books were always returned to us during the last week of school for us to take home as a keepsake. These books gave me something to be proud of and I looked forward to the day we would start another one.

In the commencement speech entitled “This is Water,” the speaker came to highlight to the graduates at the commencement ceremony, what the “real world “was like because he thought they are not alert enough to know. He made reference to this through the anecdote at the beginning where the two young fish didn’t know what water was and of course water is life to fishes. Therefore, the speaker found it necessary to tell what life was really about through a commencement speech because of his opinion that they may have limited knowledge concerning it. In paragraph 6 of his speech, he states “The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what ‘day in, day out’ really means. There happen to be whole large part of adult

In the spring of 2014, I graduated as valedictorian from Klukwan High School located in the Panhandle of Alaska. During my high school career, I maintained status on the high honor roll and received the title of Student of the Month the first month of every school year for four years. In 2011 and 2012, I was selected to attend the Youth Leadership Institute in Anchorage as a student delegate for the Chatham School District. There, I met other high school students from all over Alaska. We spent our time at the conference exercising our newfound leadership skills in fun icebreaker games and group activities. We also learned about our own unique leadership styles, and how we can apply them to various situations back home or anywhere.

Growing up, all I ever heard was the word college. From the old days of kinder garden and especially up until senior year of high school my entire life revolved around what college I wanted to go to. I believe that most people see a college education as a luxury, a grand accomplishment. There’s many different type of colleges to go to; community college, state universities, and so on. For me, the biggest thing is not where I go to college. For me, the biggest thing is simply to finish my college education and be able to walk across a stage and receive my diploma. A college education is valuable to me because it will help me in life. I will benefit from a college education career-wise, financially, and personally.

Going to college can be a very rewarding experience for a traditional, or non-traditional student who wants to go back to school. More money on a paycheck can be a reason why someone would want to presume their education. Another reason why someone would want to go on to college would be to increase their intellect so they can be more sophisticated in life. Someone might also want to further their education because college teaches your life skills. A college education can be very rewarding for a traditional or nontraditional student by making more money, more intellect, and learning life skills for the world.

As a group we decided to include a “College Success” course for freshman within out First Year Experience. Instead of making the course required, we would prefer to make the class optional and offered for 2 credits. The class would be for 50 minutes per day and either Monday and Wednesday or Tuesday and Thursday and available both spring and fall semesters for first-year students at High Point University. The course would be recommended to all freshman for the fall semester in order to assist in the transition to college life, but would be offered spring semester as well for students who struggled first semester with becoming acclimated to the university.

Ninth grade was obviously my first year of high school but, but it was also a learning experience. And now that it is almost over I understand what high school is all about, after two years of middle school and seven years of elementary school prior to that. These years leading up to high school are very different from high school, those years was like being a mime being stuck in an imaginary box, not being allowed to do anything, leaving your backpack in your locker, not chewing gum, not being able to wear hats or open toed shoes. Everything about high schools is better than the years that led up to it besides the work load. For me personally I found out fast that teachers will give you work just to give you work and although this work has no point whatsoever it is still important, because almost everything in high school is graded, and all grades matter. This was new to me in years past I would not push myself to the best of m abilities because I knew that my grades at that time didn’t mean anything. Little did I know that in high school your grades can affect what college you go to and even what your career is after college. This thought is very overwhelming because if you let it get the best of you it may lead to you failing everything you do.