My Personal Experience : My Experience In High School

However, junior year of high school changed that: I was given the opportunity to take either AP Psychology, or AP European History. I felt that the obvious choice would be to take AP European History, since I’m European and therefore already had a solid foundation for succeeding in the class, but something inside me told me to take a blind leap of faith and choose AP Psychology instead. This choice proved to be one of the greatest decisions I have made in my life. Through this class, I emerged myself into the world of psychology and fell in love with it. I didn’t complete the assignments to get a good grade. I completed them because I cherished every minute of it, and I started applying the materials learned in class to real life

One of the biggest challenges I’ve had in my academic carrier is when I started to take my upper division math courses. Math has always been my strongest subject and I particularly never asked for help. When it came to calculus III however, I started to get D’s and F’s on my assignments and exams. Things progressively got worse and my grades started to drop; I had no choice but to turn to my professor to help. My professor was willing to help any way he could, providing further insight and understanding on the subjects at hand. He gave it to me straight, if you want to master something you must put the time and effort into what your doing and utilize all your resources. Throughout the semester, my professor would meet with me for 3 hours every

My course load is jammed pack full of rigorous classes that will help me better and further understand complex topics. When I enjoyed my biology and chemistry, I was pulled towards the AP Environmental Science course, despite never taking an environmental class before. I also enjoy math and liked my physics class freshman year, wishing me to continue in honors multivariable calculus and AP physics. I want to push myself further; I work hard and study harder. This is especially apparent in my AP exam scores, where I spent months preparing for my best score. I frequently stayed after school or went into class during lunch to make sure I fully understood concepts before tests, striving to be my best. Furthermore, I continue to want to expand my knowledge by engaging in scientific extracurricular activities. I give up my free time (a rare and valuable treasure in high school) to expand on my interests in, most specifically, math. I tutor others to help them understand the complexities of this great art. I also wish to expand my ideas in math club, where we tackle more complex problems and even discuss how math manifests itself in certain activities, like solving a Rubik’s cube. All of these classes, activities, and growing interests culminate into an ever-changing body that represents me, someone who constantly wants to learn more and grow, not only as a mathematician or scientist, but a person as

Taking Chemistry in my sophomore year for example, proved a struggle; I knew that I had a passion for the subject, yet I lacked the attention span to comprehend concepts. Embarrassed of asking others for help, I instead tried to read my textbook. Still, I felt uncomfortable with the technical nature of textbooks, and I felt my problem worsened. Consequently, I tried different methods to optimize my understanding; I made flash cards, listened to e-books of text books, isolated myself to a quiet room, and read aloud. Still, the course proved brutal and seldom had I confidence that I knew the material. Although, I enjoyed the subject and aspired to become a Chemist. For

In junior High School, things started to turn around for me. Although I was still placed in lower level classes, I developed a love for learning. In the years to come from Junior High to High School, I had a strong urge to make up for lost time. One class I started to excel in was the one I used to have the most trouble with, Mathematics. It seemed as though the once boring and complex equations now seemed meaningful and simple. As I progressed into 8th grade, I was able to advance to normal classes. I felt that the hard work I put in was finally paying of. At this point, I felt that I could handle a higher level. At the end of 8th grade, I took the necessary procedures and tests to try and get into honor - level courses in 9th grade. After taking a summer course of Algebra 1 and several tests I was able to succeed and take the classes. The experience was great. I felt that I was finally going the right direction

Throughout high school, and even at the primary level, I have taken harder classes at every opportunity, just to challenge myself. I attended a large, metropolitan, school district from 1st-7th grade, where I had many opportunities to engage in advanced classes and extracurricular activities. I was involved in orchestra, book club, art club, and my district’s “Battle of the Books,” a team-based novel trivia competition, among other things. Due to a change in my father’s employment, my family moved to a smaller, rural, district halfway through my 7th grade year. Although my new school did not offer the level of advanced coursework I was accustomed to in my prior district, I continued to take the highest level of classes available. Once I reached the high school level, I realized I was not able to take AP classes or complete an IB program, as my school district didn’t offer the classes. Unshaken, I overcame the lack of classroom variety and decided to make do with what my school had to offer. While there were no AP classes, I took the highest level of coursework offered, which constituted dual credit and “honors” level classes.

I didn’t always suffer from anxiety. My childhood was bright and vibrant and rarely was I seen upset or irritated. I’ve played sports my whole life from only 5 years old. Everything from T-ball, to gymnastics, to soccer between the ages of 5 and 12. After school, if I didn’t have practice, I loved to ride my bike or play with my border collie, Molly, on our 5-acre property. When middle school came around, I was the starting server on the volleyball team, I averaged a rough score of 60 for a 9-hole round of golf, and my tall thin build made me a great addition to the basketball team as well. The sky was the limit in my young eyes and I already knew I could achieve great things if I put my mind to it.

In middle school, I was a weird, chunky kid. Not that being chunky is weird, I just looked like a little bowling ball with really frizzy hair. Having never really been good at sports, I was never really cool, and neither were my friends. It wasn’t until I saw my friend drawing, that I decided to give it a shot. I knew I wasn’t very good when I started but I didn’t really care. Wanting to get better, so I practiced more and more. At this time I was only in second grade, so I was just grateful that I found something I enjoyed.

As I gain more experience through learning in situations I find myself in, my mind flashes back to memories I have gained. A native of inner city Charlotte, North Carolina, many of my memories inspire me to continue growing with knowledge, so that I can help those whose decisions have mentally hindered them from growing intellectually. My mother had me at the age of sixteen, so the first knowledge I obtained about the world was learned through her experience as a teenage mother with dark skin in America. My family lineage is rooted in environments of low-income communities. My mother, one out of six, was raised in a household with both parents who were employed. Her mother and father, my grandparents, strived to make ends meet for the family without obtaining a high school diploma. My mother did not receive her high school diploma neither. My grandparents felt it necessary to raise me while my mother enrolled into a housing voucher program and rented her own apartment. I was enrolled into a head start program at the age of four, which helped me prepare for public schooling.

This year, at the age of eighteen, I lost one of my good friends I have had for eight years. It was without a doubt, the most traumatic experience of my life. Braydon was a handsome, happy individual who brought light to the room. He lived three houses down from me in the small town of Ucon, Idaho, and throughout the years we attended church activities and school together. Through my personal trials, I have learned to listen to the promptings of the spirit, turn to my Savior Jesus Christ in faith, and obtained a greater testimony of the Savior’s ultimate sacrifice.

For the past twenty years of my life, I have traveled down a lonely road for a vast majority of my time on this planet. When I was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome at the age of eight, making friends in grade school and high school was a very different thing for me to do. I learned differently than other people and during my high school years and I was unfairly bullied and harassed by my peers because of it. However, their teases and insults only made me academically stronger, as it only made me strive to be a better student and a better person overall. There were only a handful of students who I really interacted with in high school, however I never hung out with them outside of school. Other than my family and these select few individuals in high school, I felt all alone in this world.

At a young age, I quickly learned that I was good with numbers; math always came easy to me. Along with math, science interested me as well and my favorite things to study were the systems of the body in biology. I remember once when I was around eleven years old, my parents took me to the body museum and I actually got to see, in real life, the individual systems of the body. Whenever I got to experience this, I knew that I wanted to learn so much more about the body. During school, my learning style has always been more visual and hands on than anything. I have to see and do in order to learn, and that is how I do well in my classes. When we have group projects it is difficult for me to work with people who are assigned to me, but I do enjoy working with the people I am used to. It is hard for me to meet new people, but once I get to know them, I get along very easily.

Going through another normal school day walking down the hall with my friends of the last 3 or more years, stopping at my locker are unofficial “official” meeting spot, all of a sudden my best guy friend comes up and tells us the news that everyone seemed to know except us. First to understand our high school it was set up in a district of four different schools Lincoln-way east, north, central, and west. Kids from east tend tone friends with kids from north and kids from central were usually friends with kids from west, after all east and central were rivals in just about every sport. After hearing that one of the schools will be closing it was like bomb was dropped in the school, everyone was talking about it or worrying about it.

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

My junior year was the third and final year that I was enrolled in the business academy at my high school. Being in the business academy was just a sophisticated way of saying that I was taking an online business course through a local community college. It also meant that I was automatically a part of a career and technical student organization called Business Professionals of America. For the three previous years, I had participated in the Regional BPA Competition, however, I fell short one place of qualifying for the State Competition each year.