My Experience Of High School

My life hasn’t always been the easiest. In fact, I have gone through a lot for a typically high school student. Most of the things I went through, a lot of people haven’t. Yet, nobody is perfect right? In those four years, you may learn scholarly wise, but you also learn to grow up real quick. These four years in high school really made me think about the person I used to be, who I am today and who I want to be in the future. Your high school years really are the most important years of your life.

The first day of freshman year was a new feeling coming from the feelings of being the top dogs and now at the bottom again. The first sight of Dubuque Senior was as though I’m going to the wrong place. This place wasn’t a school. It was a prison with a big parking lot. I had excitement because of my thoughts on what high school could be for me because of the movies that my older siblings watched. Once I entered the school I could feel the potential and the aroma of great people who walked through these doors and became something great and useful to the world. The pressure pressed more when my teachers gave me my expectations. The school had walls as white as the snow on a mountain top. High school was this opening to make choices. High school

Lately I’ve been having a lot of small, reflective moments when life calms into a soft, background noise. I keep remembering things that I never thought could be forgotten in the first place. I’m still a senior in high school and nostalgia, coupled with intense anxiety for the future, leads to these memories resurfacing. Some are silly or fun, and others are overwhelmingly emotional. Particularly, the night where I decided to keep living and moving forward. I truly am who I am today because of a heartfelt conversation in the middle of a country field.

High school is one of those times in life where most people have the best times of their lives, but for me I just wanted to get through it. Coming in freshman year I was done with the cattiness of the girls, the social pressures, and the monotony of school. Then I discovered the joy of ceramics! Ceramics was unlike any class I had taken in my entire life and had far reaching effects on my life. Ceramics kept me in high school by sparking my creativity and all of life’s possibilities. In high school I found joy in ceramics, found out what it was to no longer practice, and what it was like to start doing it again after thirteen years.

Each year of school you meet new people and experience new lessons. The school year comes with many hardships and downfalls, but it also comes with some good times. For me personally, freshman year was the not only the toughest year of school to get good grades, it also had some of my most traumatizing life experiences and lessons. Freshman year was not all bad though. For example, I met many new people that I cherish dearly in life and made solid relationships with new friends, teachers, and coaches. Ninth grade is the foundation for the rest of your high school career, so I tried my best to succeed not only inside the classroom, but also outside of the classroom, and I think I achieved my goal.

People tend to believe that high school is what defines your life. It is where you create who you are and what your future will be, but that isn’t the truth. In high school, I was a person that I didn’t want to be. I was the shy new girl that no one would talk to. On the first day of school I was lucky that someone invited me to lunch. By the end of my first year I had less friends than the fingers on my hands. The few people that knew me in the large school either thought I was mean and rude or they were my friend. I went through the first half of high school not knowing who I was. Eventually I had to move schools and I was tired of being the new girl. I wanted to make people know my name and not be just some face. Unfortunately, my hopes

My eyes squinted as I gazed towards the massive building that for the next four years would be my success, demise, and most importantly, my high school. As I strut to the tall glass doors, I felt so prepared, confident even. Armed with a couple of best friends, sufficient intelligence, and adequate athleticism, I was positive that everything would go perfectly. After all, high school was the place of beginnings, a place where my friends and I would battle through together; high school wasn’t the place where everything would fall apart.

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.

There have been times in my life in which my decisions have led to negative consequences. One of these biggest mistakes occurred my sophomore year.

My path at the University of Virginia has been a challenge and an enjoyment at the same time. On my first day, I feared that I would not fit in because there were students who came from areas with better education than my high school offered, and the class sizes would be way larger than what I am used too. In high school, there was never a challenge, and teachers held students’ hands all four years. Furthermore, this made me worry about my studying skills and how I would approach my studies if they become complicated. This was important to me because I was not used to making my own notes based off a teacher lecturing the whole entire class or not copying word-for-word off of a PowerPoint. I wondered why I was selected for the transition program, but I was very excited to start my studies off early and be prepared before the rest of the students moved on grounds. With the amount of work that we were assigned each night and the intensive class’ speed, I struggled with managing my time. I felt guilty for not being able to finish all of the reading that was assigned, and I felt like I was doing something wrong. The days flew by, and I suddenly felt like there was not enough time in the day to even eat. After talking to my graduate advisor, Sara Brickman, she explained that sometimes there is not enough of time to finished all of the readings that professor may give and not to stress it. The summer sessions taught me how to use my time better and prioritize my responsibilities.

Like every Saturday morning in the spring, I found myself cramped up in the backseat of a car at an ungodly hour. With swim season ending today with the All-Star meet however, this would be the last time this year that I would have to worry about this specific discomfort, then I could focus on other 5-year-old things like my upcoming birthday. Until then, I’d have to ‘deal with it,’ something nobody my age ever wants to hear. Luckily for me, I fell asleep within a few minutes and didn’t have to endure the rest of the trip to Beaumont High School.

Starting in my eleventh-grade year of high school I never knew all the changes I would go through. I attended Chickasaw High School in Chickasaw, AL. It was a little school, which had about five hundred students in total. I did not live in Chickasaw like all the other kids. I lived about twenty minutes away in Mobile, AL with my dad and stepmom. I went to this school because my stepmom (LaRae) was a teacher there. Also, I was like most girls in high school, I had a high school sweetheart named Michael Matthews. I thought my eleventh-grade year of high school was going to be a great and memorable experience until I found out some horrible news.

On the last day of a two-week summer class, I walked down hallways that were still unfamiliar to me, in a school I didn’t know. The previous year, in ninth grade, I went to a quiet online school, and I planned on going there again. Attending this school, PLHS, was always an option, but I kept thinking it would be to much to handle. Except now, after spending some time in a real classroom, I thought about how I actually wanted to experience more aspects of high school than a computer screen. My supportive family told me I could transfer schools if I really wanted, and even though I knew it would probably be overwhelming, a few months later, I was enrolled in PLHS.

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.