Graduation Speech : My Participation

Hello, Mr. Coates. I first want to apologize, I'm not really sure how Twitter works, but I hope this goes through. I am Jia Yi Sun. I am a junior from Stuyvesant High School in New York City. In my American Literature class, we are currently reading your book "Between the World and Me". Despite not being African American, I am able to understand so much more about the world around me, especially living in such a diverse and eventful community. It really opened our eyes to the world around us. I usually do the assigned reading of the pages on my train ride home, whenever I look up after reading the book, I start to value and respect people around me so much more. There are so many people that have an amazing story behind them. When I grow up,

As result of creating and implementing this artifact, I realized that the most effective lesson plans are those which initiate with the final assessment in mind. So, I applied a pre-test at the very beginning of my lessons with every different group I would be teaching to measure a starting point or the amount of pre-existing knowledge on the topics to be taught. Based on this, I planned the instruction to deliver and how to differentiate it.

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.

1. I would like to enroll in the Senior Honors Program, because I think it will be an excellent way to complete my experience as a sociology undergraduate student at UC Berkeley. Since transferring to UC Berkeley in the Fall of 2015, many of the courses I have taken have focused on research and its importance to the field of sociology. The continued exposure to the diverse topics of sociological research, as well as the varied methods researchers use to collect their data, has shown me that many of questions I ask about the social world on a daily basis are potential sociological research projects. I find this fact to be inspiring as opposed to overwhelming, and I believe that the questions that I continually ask warrant further academic exploration. I want to participate in this program, because it will place me in an environment where I will be able to find academic answers to the questions that cross my mind regularly, and ultimately mold me into a more insightful and capable student.

High school. I never realized it would bring so many changes. As I walked on to campus my freshman year, my mindset was the same as it was in eighth grade; the young are invincible. And although I was excited to come to high school I had many fears. Would the classes be too hard, would I make new friends, what could I become involved in, and most of all -- what if I get lost? All of these fears eventually subsided and I, along with all of you, found the right classes and the right teachers. We all made new friends. We all got involved in something. During my freshman year, innocence surrounded me and although eventually my shell would crack, not until this year have I broken through. This year I decided that it is time to soar on my own.

Christopher Columbus, reflecting on his voyage which led him to the discovery of America, said, "Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World." I am sure that after four years of high school, we have all formed our own opinion of Christopher Columbus - especially if you had Mrs. Powers - but whether you view him as a genocidal rogue or the first American Hero, I find his quote fitting for where we stand today.

The Fall of 2010 was about as normal as every other fall that preceded it. The leaves changed colors and the weather got colder. It also meant that school was back in session. To me, fall time meant athletics were back in season. I was entering 7th grade and I was bummed that summer was over but excited because I was almost a year older. I was about to turn thirteen years old; I could almost call myself a teenager. I had always participated in sports but this was my first year that I could play middle school sports. I tried out for the football team and made it. I officially was an athlete for my school and I could not have been more excited. I felt like I mattered. My relationship with my father was like any other. Or at least I thought. As the season went on, the only time he came to anything of mine was to pick me up from practice or after an away game; to make it worse, he never came to any of my games which disappointed me. But it never occurred to me that something was weird between us.

During our meeting on March 23th, we discussed options to increase enrollment in the Early Degree Program (EDP). However, we quickly realized that low-income EDP students face a financial hardship when attending college without being eligible for the FAFSA. At this meeting, we decided that the best way to enroll more EDP students is to offer additional financial aid.

Good evening and welcome to the commencement ceremonies of the class of 2006. It has been a long journey, somewhere around 18 years, but we've finally reached the piece de resistance of our high school years.

We all have had many stones read to us, and even read many ourselves. In elementary school they were stories of Lad, Jane and Spot. Each of us beamed with pride as we stumbled over that first line of "See Lad go," or "Run Jane run." Then, in junior high we learned about plot and theme, and the characters of the stories actually developed personalities. Now, as graduating seniors, many of us have learned that stories can teach us valuable lessons about life. Even the simple stories from elementary school contain lessons that we can relate to our own experiences. One story in particular that just happens to be from my favorite producer, Disney, and emphasizes the importance of friendship is "The Fox and The Hound." As this story

Obtain an overall GPA of 6.5 by November 2018 to guarantee me a place into Psychology Honours in 2019 at UniSA.

Ever since I was young I always aspired to become more than I could ever imagine. I had drive and that helped me realize my goals early on in my education. I always dreamed of college and what it would be like. With the chance I could have followed in my older siblings and drop out of highschool I pushed through it to prove to my two younger siblings that bettering yourself is possible. Not only did I graduate from high school on time but I graduated with honors. I am the recipient of the McCoy Medal of Honor for being in the top 20% of my junior class but I was also a member of Van Horn High School 's National Honor Society and to top it all off I got to walk across the stage with red cords meaning I had graduated Cum Laude (GPA: 3.5-3.7). All of these were HUGE accomplishments for my family and I.

In the fall of my senior year, I am planning on applying to a variety of four year universities, but my absolute dream school would be Brown University. The school is located in Rhode Island and is considered to be a highly liberal university with a very flexible curriculum. I believe that the freedom and independence Brown offers would give me the chance to experience spiritual growth because I don’t necessarily know what I want to do in the future in regards to a career. However, I am aware that Brown is an Ivy League and that it is expensive. I come from a middle to lower class family and I know that without financial aid-there would be no possible way I could afford to attend the school of my dreams. After doing some research, I found

The long, gloomy buildup to my joyful experience began many years ago, when I first started school. Even on my very first day of kindergarten, it was already clear to me that going to school wasn’t going to be something that I enjoyed. I was very shy and withdrawn, and the other kids weren’t at all interested in being friends with me. Despite my efforts to try and fit in, they never seemed to like me as much as they all liked each other, The kids in my class didn’t see my quiet nature as shyness, but rather as something that made me strange. I was often picked on and felt excluded. Even though I always had a close friend through all thirteen years of school, I always felt as though I wasn’t fitting in like I should have been.

Throughout my sixteen years in the military, I grew very committed to my position and job in the Army, so my college education suffered gravely and took a very low priority in my life. Fortunately during my time in the military I have been able to take some college courses and slowly work on my degree, but now as my time in the Army is coming to an end my goal is to earn my college degree before retiring to make myself more marketable in civilian sector once I am out. Luckily, many of the courses I have attended in the Army have been transferable into college credits, leaving me with only having to take 12 courses to earn my Bachelor’s Degree and making it a very realistic goal of obtaining my degree before retiring. Since