I Was A Bad Kid

Before the first grade, we moved around a few times before ending up here in Sylvania. As a child, both my parents worked full time jobs and I was always at after school day cares or at my grandparents houses, never really got to spend a lot of time with friends or was able to socialize with many people. So growing up most of my time was spent with my brother and I thought nothing of it. As I grew up I began to realize that I had become stuck in some bad habits. My brother and I weren't asked to help around the house much but when we were we never listened. But to my surprise there were no consequences for our disobedience. At the time I thought I had it good. Around the time I got too middle school I began to realize the problem. I began

My mother’s irate words echoed deep in my heart for years as I tried to understand the simple words she would constantly repeat to me, “When will you ever change?” As a child, I was well known for being that foolish kid who would be put in the back of the class with his seat facing the wall. Eyes facing a blank white wall, fingernails tapping the desk, head down, and the smell of exasperation in the air. I was the type of boy who would sprint through the hallways cackling, furthermore resulting in repeatedly get scowled at by teachers for my obscene and inordinate behavior. In hindsight, I realized Freshman year after pulling the fire alarm that my behavior needed to have a parameter and come to a complete termination. Consequently, I spent the entire Summer in my room contemplating my life and my decisions.

I’ve been lucky enough to have experienced a tremendous amount of success and opportunity throughout my life. I had always performed well in school, I took advanced courses, I got into the private high school my mother went to, and because my parents owned a little Thai restaurant since I was four, I had an extracurricular that taught me people skills and offered me more work experience than any of my peers had. When I realized that I was exceeding the expectations of my parents and those around me, I became content with not reaching my full potential. It was until much later that I realized that adopting that mindset was where I went wrong. When my high school decided not to accept me into the National Honor Society during my junior year, I was devastated.

Now, I’ve never been a terribly awful student. I was the kid that made honor roll every term, passed my tests, and was very well liked by my teachers. My problem was rooted within my attendance. I tried numerous options that varied from being enrolled in online school that gave me the option to work at my own pace, to applying for a program called Job Corps, where I would live on campus and be on a boot camp like schedule. Nothing worked, school just wasn’t for me. When I turned 16, I made the decision to not only drop my online classes, but also made the decision to stop calling my counselor for Job Corps. I was never encouraged to return to school until I moved to Wisconsin a year and a half after being out of school. You don’t realize how important that year and a half is until you return to public school as a junior with three and a half credits. My attendance when I moved here was much better with the encouragement from Niki and Dave Pohnl. They gave me the motivation to actually want to finish my schooling and for that, I am eternally grateful. I attended Logan high school for the last half of my junior year where I finished with seven and a half credits. Obviously, still not even close to what you need to graduate. So, they gave me the option to come to Western Technical College to attend a program that would lead to me taking four separate

I had just received my first ever 4.0 report card for the year and got news that after school a kid wanted to fight me over a game i beat her at in a gym class. By this time I had no friends due to my inability to be myself and . The decision on whether or not to show up to the fight was tough. If i didn’t show up’ I’d be known as a sissy and if i did show up I'd be suspended and I wouldn't be able to chase all of the opportunities that came along with it. Since I was so used to my previous, impulsive behavior, a big part of me just kept feeding into the thought that I could just start my 4.0 again next year when I reached high school.

Freshman year at Renaissance High School, I was hanging out with the wrong crowd. I was skipping class and didn’t do classwork the handful of times I was in class. Time passed and before I knew it, it was my junior year in high school and while you are supposed to have 33 credits I only had 9 credits and 1 regent exam. When I was 16, I became depressed because I was raped. Throughout the time I spent in therapy, I was considering dropping out of high school. I thought it was too late for me to catch up with the credits I was missing. I felt as if my life had spun out of control and I couldn’t take control again. I thought I wouldn’t be anything besides a Bronx girl from the ghetto who dropped out of school. One night I was talking to an old

After these 2 F’s I wanted to continue being enrolled in course work because I thought I would be able to complete these having learned my lesson with the F’s I got. Very, very wishful thinking. On the first day of the winter quarter my mother suddenly became abusive. I did not inform her about the F’s so that didn’t cause it. It was due to me getting the accounting books that were necessary to do my course work which I bought. She proceeded to physically and emotionally abuse me because of it, but this grew worse and worse in degrees such as threatening to call the sheriff on me for no reason whatsoever. Because I relied upon her at the time for pretty much everything, ranging from transportation to the bus stops and money due to her having complete control over my finances, she was able to constantly abuse at every point in time. Due to the fact that I didn’t have the means to live on my own I was afraid to tell anyone about what was happening, because worst case scenario I would have become homeless. I was afraid for my life and I just wanted it to stop, I never reacted to her during all this, I stayed silent because if I said anything she would have twisted my words around. Due to this I failed assignments in the accounting course, forgot to upload a file in my spreadsheets course, and plagiarized in the English course. After that I didn’t want to continue being enrolled but my mother told me point blank that if I didn’t enroll for the spring she would kick me out. Given this I went against better judgment and enrolled in the spring of 2012. She became however even worse during the spring and I couldn’t handle it so my mind actually broke and I almost became suicidal in nature. This caused me to skip

Purposely messing up at the 5th grade spelling bee because I didn’t want to be the smart brown kid. The worry or how I will be seen by others since 5th grade, has held me back from my ambitions and potential. The pattern academic failure lasted all the way until this past year. Last year I was a freshman at Saint Louis University, I was kicked out because I had a GPA of .27. I couldn’t tell my parents that so I pretended like I didn’t receive that letter and moved back in the start of my sophomore year, this past fall, and tried to petition. My petition was denied; I was given a 3 day move out notice with nowhere to go. I packed my bags, headed to a train station and was homeless for 3 days so I slept at a train station. An elderly white couple, who had “adopted” me as their grandchild when I was born was who I decided to reach out to. They offered me to live with them in Arizona but encouraged me to go home. I sent a text at 4:00am and took a train to come to a home where I wasn’t looked at, talked to, or valued. After being academically dismissed from Saint Louis University, I woke up to adulthood. My parents were very disappointed in me and they couldn't even look at

I was out of place, a quiet girl whose clothing was obviously not fashionable, lucky if she had a bag lunch, and no reason to be confident. I was picked on relentlessly by others who recognized an easy target. My chaotic home life was never conducive to good grades, or school for that matter. No one I knew was a role model and no one volunteered to step up to be one. With no social life and a toxic home life, my grades plummeted before they had a chance to climb.

My Middle School year to my Junior year I was moving to different schools and again my attendance and grades were not improving. I was doing so bad my Dad sent me to live with my Sister which is two hours away from where I lived. I went to a new School, I hung out with the wrong people, and on the third day or my second week I got suspended and I didn’t care at all. I just wanted to go home. I ended up going to a Continuation school. Some students I would hang out with would talk to me about how they messed up and it’s hard for them now that they want to graduate knowing I was going to soon be in there shoes. I still didn’t care till later. I was where they are in their shoes. It didn’t hit me till I got notified at school that I was going to have to go to court. I didn’t want to put my Dad through it. My friends Mom knew what was going on because her Daughter was the same so she recommended us this program. I was interested so I decided to join Job Corps. I was informed about all of the opportunities this program had to offer. I wanted to make my

At Dodge City High School I was in many activities such as The Pride of Southwest Kansas, varsity tennis, drill team, enriched learning, and many other honors classes, I was even the president of the decoration committee my junior year. After my sophomore year I added another egg to my basket, and was hired at my first job. With my first job I helped my mom by getting my own phone, paying for the bill, and buying my own items and necessities. But with all these activities and work, I started to get tired, but more than anything, I got lazy, and careless. I started to spend more time procrastinating and doing things last minute. I started showing up late to class which led to not even showing up at all. At this point in my life, everything was going down hill. I got dismissed from drill team, I went from first chair in the band, to dead last, and my grades reflected my attendance. I pushed everything to the side and blamed it on “senioritis”. I thought I was doing everything right and I did what I wanted, but it wasn't until I got called down to the office for a meeting, that I realized that I was putting to shame every effort and all the time my mom spent on raising

It was the beginning of my freshman year of high school and everything was smooth until I began my advanced placement class which began out kind of easy ,but then as the work piled on and got harder I just didn't wanna do it anymore. All my other classes I was doing fine getting a's and b`s, which for me I thought was perfectly fine. I made the cheerleading team , I had a cute boyfriend and I had lots of friends. I was happy- well at least I thought I was happy. Around December I began losing a lot of weight from doing cheer and my grades started falling dramatically. My mom decided to take me out of cheer because I lost about 20 pounds so quickly and I didn't have passing grades. I remember getting so mad at her, but looking back it

My freshman year in high school was unarguably the best year of my high school career, If I knew how the rest of my school career would go I probably would have cherished it a lot more. My sophomore year was going pretty well until one major internal change shifted my well being in the worst. I always knew about depression,but It was always one of those things that I never really thought about because I thought that only certain types of people experienced depression and I couldn't be one of them. was wrong. During the spring of sophomore year I fell into a depression, at the time I did not know what depression was ,nor did I know what was happening with me so I didn't know what to do, I didn't ask for help, and I didn't talk about it. I started to go down an even darker path with self medicating, drinking ,and self destructive behavior all of which I never told to anybody. As the winter and spring ended and summer began I came out of my rut and told myself that If that ever happened again, I want to get help and I don't want to be on a self destructive path

Despite the love and support of my family, I did succumb to making poor choices. I started hanging with the wrong group of friends, caring less about school, doing things the Lizmery now wouldn’t do. My perspective changed when I entered high school. I noticed how much of a rebel I had been with my family. I understood then, all the things that my mother had done and sacrificed to give my sister and me the world. I saw my sister earn her master's degree and buy a house. As the youngest, I had great role models in front of me. I knew that what I did in the next four years had to be drastic. I had to step outside of my comfort zone, leave the negative friends behind, and take my education

During my freshman and sophomore year I was trying to find myself, trying to find what I was good at and how I can be that "well-rounded" student everyone talks about. So I joined a bunch of sports and clubs that I really had no experience at, not saying joining new clubs/sports having no experience is a bad thing, but I did go a little overboard. I was frustrated with myself at the thought that I wasn't good at anything I joined, but I figured out why. I gave up easily and I had no passion of what I was doing. I gave up at everything I did, if I saw that I wasn't good enough, I didn't practice to get better. This was my mistake, I was scared that this failure was going to define who I was forever, but it wasn't. Summer 2016 I went on a two-week trip to Puerto Rico, I met up with my family and caught up with my cousins. I told my cousins everything about my high school days and they laughed at me. They asked "How did you expect to be good at anything when you didn't work hard for it? Anyone can be good at anything if they tried hard enough" I took that by heart. This is where I came to my senses and changed, I understood the impact of having a growth