My Educational Experience In High School

Looking back, I was lucky to have the teachers I had. Most of them would try to help me, but didn’t know how to. There was something about the way the school was designed that it just didn’t work for me. The summer after my 8th-grade year was when I realized I needed to try a different form of education.

“Average? Who wants to be average?” (Rose). During my high school experience, I went through a ton of stress trying to figure out my path to educational success. I was a decently good student with grades consisting of C’s to A’s. Dealing with problems in high school made me realize what I should had done to obtain a proper education. Author Mike Rose of “I Just Wanna Be Average” and article writer Jessica Lahey of “Teaching Math To People Who Think They Hate It” both state solutions to my problems. During high school, I was not very interested during lecture and had a love and hate relationship with math. How I would improve my experience is to do more hands on activities and to learn math in a different way.

Students who are becoming freshmen often ask “what’s it like to be in high school?” High school is not what you think. Freshmen don’t get pushed in lockers, there's not that one popular girl who shoves other students books out of their hands, and the cafeteria is not the most embarrassing place to be. High school is not an amicable. If you really think high school is a amicable place where students smile at each other, think again. Here is some advice from my high school experience.

I recall the beginning of my freshman year when I was thrown into the chaotic and hectic mess that is high school. Not only was I given a much harder course load than ever before, but I also started the year off with volleyball. This made my life so incredibly difficult. As if getting home from a game at 10 o’clock was not enough, I typically still had about an hour of homework to complete due to my honors classes. That season felt longer than a giraffes neck . From the long nights of homework, to the complete mental breakdowns, Freshman year was one of the worst experiences of my life.

It was fall of my final year of Junior High and I was excited to go into high school. In Arellanes Jr High School I was a very popular person but, my circle was very small. I was a short brunette that dressed like a tomboy. I was a honor band student and also a cheerleader, it was a weird combination for me. I had a boyfriend in the beginning of the year and his name was Isaac and he was the person that really motivated me to do better in school. Isaac was a tall, slim mexican boy that loved to draw. Once school finally started I would get up at seven in the morning to get ready for school. Then leave around 8:10 in order to not miss the bus to school. At my bus stop it was just a couple of kids because where I lived they called it the “rich new houses”. In the city of Santa Maria it was very small and low populated city where everyone knew each other and not many of the houses were really in the best condition. In my bus stop the kids there were the people that I would usually spent time with. Julie, Mia, and Alex were the people that I mainly talked to but then I started to notice that there was 2 new boys that were at the bus stop. I decided to step up and introduce myself. Once I introduced myself they told me that their names were Juan and Jalen. Juan and Jalen were best friends and I noticed that they were both not going in the right path. Later on throughout the year I started to become closer and closer. One day after school when Cheer practice was cancelled I was

1. Provide a short description of your high school experience. How have you grown/evolved from 9th grade to this point? List some of the highlights of your high school career.

I walk into a new place where I have never been before trying to find where i’m going next. I struggle to look for my friends in a commons area full of people. It doesn't help that my eyesight is very poor. I start walking straight into the commons in hopes to find someone. I finally find a group full of familiar people who had graduated two years ago from the school I went to. I go up to them and ask them where my classes are, if i have good teachers, and if anybody has the same classes that i do. Unfortunately none of them did but as i spot my better friends i say goodbye and head away from them. I walk up to my best friends alec and tyler they tell me “Gracie there's nothing to worry about, its college!” I figure that they are right but that doesn’t change the fact that it was only my first day and i had no idea who anybody was here. I was scared, i knew it was going to be way harder than high school. Both alec and tyler say they have the first class with me and it was 15 minutes to but they joked with me and said that it's almost mandatory to show up at least 5 minutes late to a college class. So of course it also made me nervous that they were going to be late to class. I had thought about all the times i got threatened for my attendance at the high school and how the teachers would make you go to ISS for the whole hour if you were even a minute late. I had millions of thoughts running through my head, who am i going to sit by? What if the teacher yells that we are

Many people think that I’ve got everything going for me. I’m captain of my school’s varsity cheerleading squad, I’m an honors student, I’ve got a talent that works for me, and I’ve got a bright future ahead of me. Few people understand that getting to where I am hasn’t been easy.

When I walked that day into the school, I felt hatred from the surroundings. Teachers, students, and counselors looked at me like I’m the enemy. It wasn’t literally that, but that’s what I sensed. My experience in the Elementary school and in the middle school was daunting. I wasn’t a student that wanted to learn, educate, and enhance. School was a nightmare for me. I hated to go there nor even do anything that is related to it; It didn’t mean anything to me. I lacked improvement, and self-assurance, because I used my life for joyfulness and dissipate. The absence of good grades made my relations with everyone defective and I didn’t feel jubilant with it, until that day came.

Going into high school didn’t give me the effect I was expecting. Instead of my usual indifference about life, I found a light at the end of the tunnel. My entire outlook was shifted from one point of the spectrum to its opposite. Everything I thought I knew had been revised in way. My experiences in high school have done a great job in shaping how I perceive the world. Freshman year is when I began learning about the real world.

The first year, the time to prove myself had arrived. Classes, rooms, teachers, and some students were unfamiliar. Eventually, minutes melted into hours, hours to days, and days to weeks. It didn’t take long before my schedule was routine, something of second nature. Humor and happiness were found in the form of my advisory family, where school was transformed into something more than going through the same motions of day to day activity. By the closing point of sixth grade, I was having a hard time letting go of what I’d adapted to. “What’s wrong?” my dad asked when I was getting into the car after being picked up early on the last day. I explained how distressed I was that my first year of middle school exceeded my expectations, and that it had to come to an end. Although his outlook viewed my reason for sorrow as trivial, I didn’t.

Growing up, my parents had given me everything that any child ever wanted; a good home, loving parents, and lots of materialistic objects. I went to a private school, where on paper I looked very involved. Though I was very active during my time in high school there was always a disconnect, an empty feeling that I had within myself. Day in and day out I was just going through the motions of life, not looking or hearing what God 's will was for me. That empty feeling I had would all change when God put Fradwin in my life who had taught me a valuable lesson. Unknowingly, Fradwin helped me understand the value of hard work and how to become grateful; two important lessons that have been forever ingrained within my heart.

I remember being in elementary school watching, “That’s So Raven,” on Disney Channel, wishing I was already in high school like Raven so I can have the same pleasurable experiences as she did. As I grew older and wiser, I realized “That’s So Raven,” was a fantasy and life is not that easy. Although I had challenges throughout my academic journey; my successes did outweigh my failures.

I was a 17-year-old pregnant high school dropout the first time I took the General Educational Development (GED) test. It was in the summer of the year 2001 on a beautiful sunny day at our local university. The GED test was to provide me with a high school diploma equivalent. I had months of preparation and practice tests. I was a fast learner and always well prepared. I was confident and very adamant in passing this test. That is, until I got the results of the GED test.

By the age of seventeen, I have attended six different schools in two different states. My first home, the place that I made most of my closest friends, was Washington State. In preschool, I attended a “private” Montessori school till I was five years old. This is where I learned the alphabet and other skills for the future. Preschool was the stepping stone of the start of my education in Washington. At age 6, it was time for me to attend elementary school. My parents, hoped they could find a school that would be best for me. The first school I went to was a public school. Soon, a setback of mine would arise and affect me in many ways.