My Experience : My Personal Experience In High School

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

I never truly did have a high school experience, sure I had a dozen or so friends, but my relationships with them lacked depth. We may have seen each other on the weekends and laughed at each other’s jokes, but in the end it was entirely meaningless. We had almost nothing in common besides the fact that we attended the same school. The only reason I had made friends with them in the first place was simply out of necessity, after all, no one wants to be that kid that sits alone at the lunch table. Had we not become friends, each and every one of us would have been that kid.

“So, why did you choose to come here?” a dorm proctor asked the very first time we met, right in front of my room in Bancroft Hall, which would be my new home for the next nine months. Confused and a little jet lagged, I did not respond; I nodded, smiled, and stepped back into my room. As the door closed, locking me into my little world of isolation, I thought about the question. I did not know the answer, for I did not “choose” to come to this school. In fact, I expected to attend a school in the UK. However, as a Thai Scholar, I did not have much choice but to go wherever the Thai embassy told me to go. As fate had it, I was placed in one of the most prestigious high schools: Phillips Exeter Academy.

When I was fourteen years old, I realized that I was very different from my twin sister Annsley. When Annsley and I were in the eighth grade there was a form that we received to encourage students to join the band. I had no desire to join the band, I wanted to play soccer while Annsley on the contrary, could not wait to sign up. She even had a countdown for the first football game because she could not wait to march with her now, new band friends.

Whaaaannnnn! I hear as I wake up wiping my eyes. My one year old son Ashton is screaming his eyes out. I then waddled into the bedroom where he was laying and quickly put him back to sleep. I finally started to fall back asleep myself before I heard knocking on the bedroom door. It was my mother saying “Wake up it’s time for school”. I then laid in the bed and closed my eyes as I tried to get a few more minutes of rest when my mother then yelled from the other room “Get up, you are going to make me late for work”. I then knew from there it was going to be a long school year.

Maybe it was the thought of what people felt about me, or the way I felt their glare on my back as I walked past a group of people. It could also have been the way that people stopped talking as I got closer to them and all that gave them away was the accusatory look in their eyes. The tables had turned suddenly letting me with no choice but to experience the way that other half lived. Living as a socially awkward student was difficult, but living amidst all the flying rumors was close to impossible. That fall was a life lesson that made me appreciate the friends I had and humbling me to see past the materialism that existed in the school to the vanity of it all.

This year started atrociously and I was asceticism to the fact that my job was keeping me from doing my finest in school. I look back at it not with disappointment but with the recognition that I can’t multi-task two major time-consuming activities. I was working 5-9pm, 6 days a week was physically and mentally exhausting I would always come to school tired. I would be tardy and or late every day in my 1st hour. At one point I was failing four classes. I would come home from work and be up until like 3 am. I was trying my best to keep up on like the essays but my ADHD made everything so hard. But it was so much I would end up stressing out. Semester one was just rough in general. I went to parent-teacher conferences and it opened my eyes but not enough for change. But by the end of conferences, my mom was crying because she wanted to know what was wrong. I wanted to tell her but I couldn’t. I’d rather self-destruct myself than have everyone worried about me. Then I was to a point when I just didn’t care what anyone else thought I just wanted to make money and blow it on materialistic things like clothes and shoes and things of those sorts. I was at a point where I literally let money control who I was and how I acted as a person. Finally came the day of the essay I really did try like my problem was I had all the information but didn’t know how to put it on paper and I also struggled with focusing on writing the paper because the number of pages overwhelmed me and then

San Francisco in 1906. Laughter and questioning was what they heard but all I could hear, were memories of trains flashing by my house and the mutters of drunk and drugged homeless men pacing up and down the streets. At 11 years old, all I wanted was to live in a safe welcoming neighborhood with trees shading the street, letting light flow through the branches at dusk. All I wondered was why my parents chose to live where we did. I was able to avoid having friends over throughout Elementary, but them coming over during middle school was inevitable. The embarrassment I had about where I lived had consumed much of my childhood, but I learned how to be open about who I was and how one aspect of your life does not determine who you are.

Picture this, a big high school football-playing senior in the middle of his school’s stage; a sea of freshman filled the audience in front of him. He has his thumbs up, elbows back, butt out, knees together, head back, and tongue out. He was singing the song “Singin in the Rain,” that football player is me. I was leading the freshman in our first icebreaker of the day in hopes of waking them up while also setting the scene for fun the rest of the day at our Freshman Ignition. For the third year in a row, I would be a mentor for the Freshman, except, this time, as a Senior, I would have a part in running the show. That day was full of fun activities like kung fu introductions, a skit for the freshman and a game called the human machine. I had a lot of fun myself leading the kids around and talking to them. We were able to make a fun and exciting atmosphere which contributed to a positive first experience for the freshman in high school. The ability to give back, help others grow, and make the time worthwhile is the job of a mentor. In college, I want to grow more than just academically, I strive to share lessons with others while I am learning.

I have always been a shy person since I was a little kid. I was always nervous to go do things with people or to make a mistake in front of people. I remember in the 7th grade, the teacher called on me, and I had been paying attention but I got the question confused so I said something that was wrong. I felt the whole class just stare at me and laugh. Ever since then I have always struggled with self confidence. I lacked self confidence in just about everything, like what clothes to wear, what to say to people, talking in front of a class, etc.

One of the most successful experiences I have had in my previous years in school was taking nine science credits in four years. This might not sound like much of an accomplishment, but when you consider that the requirement to graduate from most schools is three it takes on a little more weight. The reason I did this was that I want to be a doctor and that drives me to learn as much about science as I can. My top strength from the Gallop test was empathy, this helped me to get nine science credits in that my empathy partly drives my desire to be a doctor. While taking the science classes taught me a lot that will be helpful in my profession, it also taught me how to study and manage my time wisely.

Growing up I was a very shy person. I was the type of girl who hid her feelings because that's just what I was used too. My parents separated when I was only four years old. It was hard for me because I didn't have my parents together. It made me feel like it was my fault. They would argue about who was going to watch me when they went to work or how they couldn't afford somethings for me. I felt like like I couldn't talk to them about how I felt and that's why in school I would always shut people out when it came to my feelings. I remember teacher trying to talk to me but all I would do is shut them out, teacher after teacher. I knew that coming into Pritzker I was going to have a difficult time and I was going to have no one there to talk to.

Being 5 feet tall, 90 pounds isn’t the ideal way to start high school, especially when you have plans to be a Division-1 student-athlete. If life were an elevator, my elevator was moving up through the floors at a frustratingly slower pace than those around me. I can attest that being picked last and left out can be quite a blow to one’s self-esteem. I have been on the “B” team and have felt that I wasn’t good enough to be out there on the field at all. The feeling, though, never quite sat right with me and I recognized early on that it was my challenge to overcome.

So far in life, my passion has been educating myself to the fullest extent. Ever since I was in middle school, though not as understanding, I knew that all I really wanted to do was take in as much information that the world had to offer for me. Starting with advanced math classes, to other challenging AP courses. I even took the Calculus one and two course at my high school, through PSU, and did everything I could in order to prepare for Calculus three and four at PSU. Yet no matter what boundaries I pushed in high school, nothing was comparable to a real college course. Calculus three and four was by far my most rigorous academic challenge I have ever faced. Through devoting the most time and effort I have ever put into anything, I

It was august of 2014 and wouldn’t you know it, another school year is about to start. Like most kids my age, I wasn’t ready for the workload of high school and the stress, I would have rather stayed home and rode four-wheelers, played video games, and eat whatever I want whenever I want. I came into high school hoping it would fly by and thinking I would just barely pass all my classes and then I would be done and off to bigger and better things. And really what I came to find out is high school gave me an education, but it also gave me a picture of how my life will take shape.