I never expected I’d spend the first two years of high school bedridden and suicidal. I was born and raised in Elmhurst, Queens. Attending the same school from kindergarten to 8th grade, I was used to being in the same environment. I was given assurance when my friends consistently told me that I was lucky and that I would be able to adapt to high school life fairly quickly — I was the outgoing one, the one who made everyone laugh.
The day we received our high school acceptance letters was the biggest day for every NYC eighth grader. To my excitement I was accepted into my second choice school — the school that I worked so hard to get into. A new wave of accomplishment fell over me as I knew my hard work paid off.
Shortly, I made new friends, joined the choir, and auditioned for a band. Yet, I still felt alone. Sooner or later, I felt hated by my teachers and unlike my middle school, my high school had a 8% asian population. Although it didn’t bother me at all, it all changed once the students began throwing racist remarks and referred to me as “the asian girl”. Constant rejection kept hitting me in the face as my grades starting plummeting no matter how hard I tried.
At the time, I was unsure on how to deal with my emotions. Driven by anxiety, I called my best friend one morning and we took the day off from school. Her father was in the hospital and we were both in a place where we just wanted to disappear. With nothing to do, we took a bus all the way to the beach.The
To many freshman the first day of high school is the opening chapter of a new novel, a fresh start to a sometimes embarrassing middle school experience we would all just love to erase from our memories. August 13th, 2012 was the beginning of my four year long narrative at Cypress Bay High School. Despite my desperate desire to grow up, become an adult, and move far away from my parents for college all that did not seem possible because I had never previously attended a public school. I was struck with fear that I would not be able to adjust to the fast pace dynamics of a large high school.
August 15, 2013 was the date that I entered high school. I had high hopes for the upcoming high school years to be my best years ever since I was in sixth grade. I expected that I can make more friends, join more club activities, and can choose classes that I really like. Although I was very enthusiastic and eager to start the all new school years, I also had a lot of worries and confusion about it also. The night before I start my freshmen year, the thoughts of failing classes, and be able to graduate high school kept
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.
As any other freshman entering high school it can be a very nerve racking situation. On September 8, 2015 I Chelsea Gonzalez was entering high school in Thurgood Academy Of Learning And Social Change , my mind was going crazy and I didn't know what to expect. I have always asked myself whether high school would be similar to what appeared in movies; people dancing and singing on top of the lunch tables or, was it going to be a 4 horrible school years in which I would never make friends. I clearly remember seeing kids running toward their group of friends, as I walked down the lunchroom. My hands were sweating and it felt like a million butterflies in my stomach. The room was filled with cries of laughter, kids running back and forth asking each
There were students from all around the world who had different cultures, religions, and hardships. I perceived that high school is a race, a race where I can run at my own pace and my goals are the prize. I entered an environment where the opportunities were endless and I was allowed to accomplish whatever I want. My confidence began to flourish. I started involving myself in school work and began to participate in class. During my sophomore year, I engaged in numerous group activities such as the school play, science competition team, and advanced arts. I earned respect and developed a reputable character in school. I reached a milestone in my journey during junior year when I was inducted into the National Honors Society, played varsity tennis and became class
It was the first month of my high school years, I was as nervous as an incoming freshman could be. I had no idea how long and strenuous my years at Bensalem High School would feel. As many others, I had a hard time adjusting to the transition from middle school to high school. Unlike others, though, I struggled about twenty
That doesn’t sound like a positive start to high school, and it wasn’t. After years of apathy, of ‘it doesn’t matter if I fail, nobody cares, it doesn’t matter,’ of aspiring to nothing, I was suddenly confronted with ‘it does matter.’ I faced real consequences for my decisions. Where before I been up to my neck in pure academic diffidence
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
Stepping on to my high school’s campus for the first time, I felt a little nervous, a bit excited and very clueless. I rushed to my friends who were conveniently standing near the entrance; almost as to feel safe. The transition from middle school to high school meant very much to me. I entered high school knowing that it was my chance to finally work towards reaching my goal of attending college; it was the chance life had privileged me with. Looking back it all now, It was a change I didn't feel prepared for, yet, I regret very little and glad I worked as hard as I did.
“When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you will be successful.” These are the words of Eric Thomas, my inspiration, and that of many others. The starting of high school directly coincides with a change in my life; nonetheless, of which both come to be what I call my greatest milestone. From this milestone, I have led a better, more impressive path than I would have if I these words and the many more that continue to inspire me had fallen on the deaf ears of my past self. One of the most important parts of this milestone is the why I started seeking an adjustment; from this why I realized what was holding me hostage to the dreams I endlessly longed for and why they would to me always remain fantasies of a what if lifestyle. There have been many instances in which this refining of my life has benefited me; however, none compare to how far hitting this milestone has assisted me in my school life.
During my freshmen and sophomore years of high school I began to become frightened, high school was much tougher than middle school, the competition was troublesome, and certainly building new friendships had no time on my calendar. I didn’t fit in the teen society, and so I grew up to believe that I had excluded myself from that society and decided that my thoughts, intentions, circumstances, even goals were different from theirs.
When I first got into the high school, I honestly expected it to be a breeze. I thought I would get A’s on every essay, every project, without even trying. That was when life decided to smack me in the face.
It was once said by a famous poetic philosopher, Lao Tzu, that “ The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”, and one of those many steps begins with the foundation of entering high school. Adapting to the swift and major changes of high school engulfed my mind with excitement and anticipation. Though the expedition of transitioning from high school to college has only merely begun, the lessons learned throughout my time in high school has enabled me to not only share my adolescent experiences and outcomes, but to also create a new account of myself within college.
It was 2016, and I was finally a senior in high school. Being a senior in high school was something that I had dreamed of since my early middle school days, and at last, I was there. It was the last year in one of my least favorite environments, and I couldn’t wait to graduate and move away from the only place I had ever known. I had lived in the same town for seventeen years, and I had gone to the same school with the same people for thirteen years. I was looking forward to something new in my life. I was most excited for my senior year because it was the year that I was going to choose where I wanted to move away to and what school I wanted to spend the next four years of my life at. As the year moved along, I slowly realized that I wasn’t moving away and that I’d be staying home to attend college, which was one of the most difficult decisions that I ever had to make.
As the class of 2018 works towards their last months of high school, those who have aspirations to attend college will spend these last few months filling out endless applications, finding schools to take the SAT or ACT, and putting the machine that high school has forced us to become on overdrive. We will look back at all the long night and countless homework assignments that overlapped our obstacles. For some, the struggles encouraged them to quit trying. For others, the struggles provoked them. For the select few, the struggles are the reason we chose to strive.