My Experience At School

As we pulled up to the massive elementary school building, I begged my mom to let me stay home from school, just once. As usual, she said no. Realizing my attempt to get out of school was futile, I shouldered my backpack, swung open the door, and trudged over to the front door. I would rather be anywhere else than here. For the majority of my life, I attended public schools. It wasn’t rare for me to fail a test or even a whole class. It was because of these failures that I would get even more demotivated and threw away the idea of working hard or completing quality work altogether.

After graduating from Forsyth Country Day School, an academically, rigorous private school, I knew the real world or the real deal was coming to me and that was college. I wasn’t too worried about college because I knew my high school had prepared me good for college by my high school treating us as if we were at a university. We took college like classes; We even had a dress code. My high school had its own honor code that was took serious. It was a challenge that I conquered. My school was in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and I live in Ridgeway, Virginia. I managed to maintain A’s and B’s waking up at 6:10 a.m. just to get to school at 8:05 a.m. It was a hour drive down and a hour drive back. It was worth it as I can see now because it prepared me.

As I have grown up, I have been extremely lucky to grow up in a well rounded household with privileges that many students are not able to experience. From a young age I was enrolled in a private school and then moved to a public school program in a nice neighborhood with an impressive school system. I was able to enroll in club sports and be a part of anything my heart desired. My parents were both able to receive a college degree and go straight into the workforce with little debt from their college educations. I have been able to have dogs, fish, and a cat throughout my childhood, never realizing how much of a privilege that was until I began to grow older and meet people who had grown up in very different situations. Waking up christmas morning to see stockings filled and presents piled high, everything I had asked for and more. I've been able to travel all over the world and experience things that some people can only dream about. However, once I came to high school, I joined the Academy for Global Studies, which is a program that focuses on the global aspects, and has helped me to become more aware of the people around me and not focus

I started high school in September of 2014 and I was still trying to adjust country because I had moved from Guyana to the U.S.A. I faced many challenges when starting new school but nothing could be compared to my experiences with Algebra. I remembered I had Algebra 1 (5th period). As I walked down the long, noisy hallway decorated with posters that held announcements surrounded by white and purple walls, all I can think of is going to my class. I was nervous and I could feel beads of sweat forming on my forehead and shivers running up my spine like the speed of light. I stop for a minute. I have arrived at the Algebra and slowly walked into the class to the back debating if I should just run out of class and go to the counselor. However, I decided to stay today and I headed to the back of the class where no one will notice me. I call the back of my class the “safe place” because it is where I can drown out reality for 45 minutes. I started the do now and it was talking about equations, I tried to do it but I couldn’t. It was time to exchange our do now’s to be graded by our partners . I got back my grade and I was upset because I couldn’t even get 1 question right. I began to wonder if I will ever be successful in this class and I was even thinking about whether or not it was a good choice to come to America to become a failure. Looking around at my classmates I saw that they were understanding the teacher and passing with good grades but I wasn’t. I remember back in my

One sunny August morning, I woke up to register as a student at Ball Junior High School. The process of registering included: filling out applications, showing medical information, and buying school uniforms. That night, I could not sleep due to my excitement and slight nervousness for the next day, which was the first day of school. On the first school morning, I woke up exhausted because I was not used to waking up early. I got dressed and ate cereal for breakfast. Once I arrived at school, there was a huge line for a paper showing all of the students’ first periods. Mine was drama class. Before class, I sat down in a seat in front of this tall, blond, girl with an adorable pixie cut and a teal colored sweater. At the time, I was currently alone in the room with

It was a hot cloudy day in August. The very first day of my 10th grade high school day at Carolina high, was a day where I decided that I wanted to join the volleyball team. I was so nervous and also devastated because I did not have any money to get my sports physical done. I had until the first week of September. Which was the 2nd week of school to get it done, and this was a day where I had to overcome my fears and worries. However, I did not know if I had a chance to make it on the team or not. I had no enthusiasm to try out because I knew there were other players that were better than me. I thought to myself, “If there were other players better than me, then I would not make the team, and it made me discouraged.”

That day I found out If I was a school shooter I would be a straight white male, 79% of the time. However, if I were to go to jail I would find that all I would have had to be, was a different skin color.

School was rolling up and since I lived alone now was kinda different. I was homeschooled and on a mountain near Seoul. I got startled by Candy (my rabbit) who stomping on the wooden floor. I hesitantly get up from my bed and walk over to Candy and feed him some food. I look at the time, 6 AM, its was still early so I changed into my new uniform from Hikari Academy. The school was for people that have super powers and abilities. Mine was Telepathy and Animal control. I kinda got it from my parents about slightly different. I cook some eggs and start eating. When I finish, I get up from the chair and stretch. Because I was homeschooled, I had no friends in the past. Well I did have some animal friends. When I go to school I usually get headphones so I don’t read everyone’s mind which was kind of annoying hearing everyone’s thoughts. After 30 minutes I put my phone in my pocket and grab a soft scarf. I head out the door and the cold air goes through me. I quickly put on my headphones, almost forgetting. I walked my way to the school, many others were also going to school. I arrived at the massive school and realized how nervous I was. It was quite frightening. I see a guy that was at least 6ft tall. I walk in the school. And some people look at me weirdly. It was probably because of my tattoo I got before, making them think I’m in some kind of gang. Until I realize that a dove was on my shoulder. I eagerly shoo away the bird. I really disliked attention from others. I look

It was a sunny summer day and football camp, was going to start. The week before I was preparing for it. I bought gloves and cleats. I love football, but I can’t play it because I am too short and I can’t catch. I knew in the next couple of weeks I would be at camp.

Throughout my years of school, I often was the top of my class. I excelled in subjects such as science and math, and even could write an essay worthy of applause. In kindergarten, my mother gave our teacher a paper with nine different math problems, all advanced for what we were learning at the time. I had completed them all with ease and efficiency. I was recommended for a program at the school called Challenge. This program was for the students who “thought differently” and “performed tremendously” in normal schooling. I took the qualifying tests and passed and was to begin attending the next week. I recall my parents telling me sometime later that the instructor for that class told my parents that she had never seen such a young boy with the intelligence I had.

During my first semester of sophomore year in high school, I faced the well known dilemma of actually working for my grades and becoming pressured to the stress of high school. I was just learning how to juggle the tasks of being concertmaster (the top musician/violinist in an orchestra) of two different orchestras and the team of captain of a tennis team I joined by mistake. In that sense, I was a legitimate musician/athlete and I didn’t realize the responsibility hung on my shoulders. Later into the school year, I learned my music teacher signed me up for a performing arts program where I would travel and live on the Radford University campus and learn from world renowned musicians for four weeks during the summer. I then went through the rigorous application process of hunting down teacher recommendations, writing and rewriting admission essays, selecting music for my repertoire, and perfecting my performance technique.

Experiencing High school is where it all began for me. Of course my middles school teachers tried to make us all feel as if high school was going to be hard and a bit scarey, but it wasn’t until I was ending tenth grade and the beginning eleventh grade when i started feeling that way. I had an idea of what my future wanted to look like but didn’t know how or if I could get there, until I took a class called PFM (Personal Financial Management). My experience taking PFM taught me why i needed to get serious about what today millennials call “adulting”.

When I was five years old, I loved school. The bright colors of the classroom appealed to me, and what I was learning fueled my soul, making me feel as if I could take on anything my adult life could try to throw my way. The only thing that could make it better, I thought, was actually going to school. My family didn’t believe in traditional brick and mortar schools. They believed that by going to public school, their children would inevitably become corrupt. My begging resulted in being allowed to strap an old backpack on and walk out of my back door, around the exterior of my house as many times as I wished, and then back inside through the front door. This lasted a few days before I realized that this result was a ripoff. Even as a small child, I valued quality education, and being treated fairly. I taught myself math until age nine and even though bystanders tried to help me, I was tested and therapy was recommended, but I received my GED and have started college.

When I first attended Park fall of last year I was vastly unprepared for college, so when I entered as a nursing major I quickly realized two things. 1) I had no clue how to study 2) I’m not very good at anatomy.

Many of my classmates know me as "that incredibly smart kid who is destined to achieve great things yet is always so helpful and nice and humble". From my interactions with them, I sense that they respect me for my academic excellence, but even more so for my obliging attitude towards everyone around me. Though I believe my classmates would correctly identify my strong academics as issuing from a natural talent coupled with an innate motivation to learn, most are actually unaware of the two major factors in my environment that have influenced my character.