My Experience In High School

It was freshman year in high school, and I was ecstatic about the fact that I can officially refer to myself as a high school student. However, not everything was perfect, nor filled with sunshine and rainbows. It was just two weeks into the school year when I faced my first arduous obstacle.

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

High school did teach me how to solve math problems, take good notes, and ask for help when I needed it the most; but it didn’t teach me how to efficiently prepare for college. My high school taught me how to associate with people I didn’t even know. But, it never taught me to take notes down when the teacher was talking about crucial information, such as y=mx+b being on the test. It may have taught me that I could pass some tests without studying, but it never taught me how to come up with a study method for making sure I do an outstanding job on the 15 point Geometry quiz. Now that I’m in college I feel like I have to prepare myself for it and to succeed in the process.

On a chilly, fall day, I ran out of my high school so that I could reach my car quickly and avoid the after-school traffic, as it was essential that I hurry so that I could arrive at work on time. Being that this day was only my fourth day, I desperately wanted to be on time. Before me stood a tall building, a nursing home, Epworth Manor. Since working there, I had built close relationships with the residents, and as an activities aide, my job was to brighten their days. This job was so important to me, for I felt as though I was honestly making a difference in the lives of the elderly, despite the significant age difference between us.

4th grade was a filled with chaos. Even if I try to remember one moment, I can only pull out blurry images. But out of all of these foggy memories, one stands above all. Three years back, I’m standing in front of the whole class; face as red like blood as everyone gawks and laughs. How I got into this situation is a long story. Very little did I know, it would alter my singing ‘career’.

The struggles of and the struggles people created for me during my high school years. Honor student, very quiet, ad never been apart of the crowd. The desire to fit in only resulted in a terrible experience and the devastation of the grades on my transcript. I became more into my social life then my education. It took self analyzing and the realization of the dreams that I want to achieve for a spark of change to come.

Why am I still here? There's no point in learning stupid facts and formulas. I’m sketching onto a generic college brochure. I hate being in this seminar. I don’t even want to go to college. I mean it’s pretty much pointless for an artist to attend university. Thankfully it’s easy to tune out the boring monotone voices surrounding me. High school is dragging on. I am a senior this year, but it feels like an eternity until graduation.

I walked into Urban wearing Abercrombie and Fitch Jeans, a maroon v-neck t-shirt with a cardigan, and tan Sperrys. I had planned the outfit out the night before, wanting to impress my peers and show off my mature and put together high school self. I came into the big cold Urban gym in with my head held high, believing, no, knowing that I had made the perfect outfit to represent myself on the first day of school. However, my confidence quickly deflated and red rushed to my cheeks as I realized my mistake.

As I opened my eyes and allowed my posture to relax, I let out a long, deep breath. The Buddhist monk conducting the religious ritual made his closing remarks, and I was sent out of the temple, back into the sweltering heat of summer in Virginia. Because a scout is reverent, it was expected of me by my troop that I attend one religious ceremony during my time at the National Scout Jamboree. Leading up to the service, my 13 year old self was especially concerned that the experience would be long, boring, and uneventful. “Why should I have to sit in silence when I could be rock climbing or mountain biking?” I thought. After the ceremony, however, I was at peace. I found that I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. By the time my troop and I left the Jamboree, the culmination of my adventures started to awaken something within me.

I watch from the beige colored sidewalk as my Ma pulls away in the Nissan Pathfinder that we dubbed as the ‘Blue Shoe.’ I turn and look up at the newly built building. There it stands in its newly built glory, the sun is rising behind the building and it seems to cast a halo effect on it. Little did I know it would be like Hell more than Heaven. It was my first year of going to a public school, I was a 6th grader this year, as I had been doing my schooling at home. With this came the ability to be a grade ahead because Ma said that I was to busy when I was younger.

Until the summer of my sophomore year, I was unquestionably shy. I was the kid whose raised hand lifted four inches off the table and who slouched over her sketches of strangers. That summer, I was forced to change.

In the late months of the two-thousand and fourteen first semester, I had begun my dangerous excursion into a precarious realm of stress and irritation to a juvenile network of literacy and instruction. I was beginning my first year of high school, which was still a new territory for me. I had previously attended at Howe middle school, but I was not prepared for high school. At my high school, the building is different than any other building on the campus. The high school building is on one continuous slab of the concrete foundation, but there is a gap in between the two halves of the building. In this gap, there is a connecting concrete flooring that is level with the two previous halves’ floors. The Howe students, faculty and I called this structure the “breezeway.” During a hot school day, the wind tunneled through the breezeway and brush across me like an ocean of cool air. Of all the memories in the breezeway at my high school, I can remember one moment where I saw something that changed my outlook on what I wanted to become.

The day I left home for the first time to start Junior High was a bright day, brimming with hope and optimism. I’d always done well at school, so expectations for me were high, and I had gleefully set foot into a new chapter of student life, relationships and experiences. Now appearances, of course, can be deceptive, and to an extent, this spirited and energetic persona of mine had only been a veneer, although a very convincing one. The truth is underneath of it all, I was deeply unhappy, insecure and fundamentally frightened-- frightened of other people, of the future, of failure, and of the emptiness that I felt was within me. Despite all of this, I was very skilled at hiding it, and from the outside I appeared to be someone with everything to hope for and aspire to. This fantasy of invulnerability was so complete that I had even deceived myself, and by the end of the first year, no one could’ve predicted what was about to happen.

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

At first I thought high school was going to be a breeze, but was not a breeze at all. The classes seem very hard for me. I tried my very best even though I thought it was hard. I gave my freshman classes my all but still getting ok grades I wanted an A on my class work but I was not getting those grades. I felt like a big failure. So I started not to care I gave up really gave up. I started not doing my work and stop participating in class. I was skipping class not giving a care in the world. I kept getting into trouble. Always in the dens office and that was just my freshman year. My report card was really unacceptable I would cry when I see my grades but I know It’s because I would skip class and not do my work. Summer was coming up school is getting to an end and I got my report cards again and I see my GPA was so horrible and my guidance consul Mr. Martin called me down to his office to talk to me about my grades and that I’m starting freshman year all over again . He was telling me to get on track, it’s not the end of the world that I can still do it if I focused on my work. So I told my guidance consul Mr. Martin I would do my best.