My Personal Experience : My Experience In High School

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.

“Today is finally the day,” I thought with butterflies in my stomach as I hopped into my car and trekked forty miles to The University of Massachusetts Boston. Everyone’s first day as a college student is daunting and the nerves were definitely high that day. I was no longer attending a high school of a little over five hundred students, but rather a university with a total undergraduate enrollment of over twenty-two thousand students. This day was the start of a new chapter in my life and the University introduced entirely new opportunities for me to explore. Since the first day here, I have been submersed in a culturally diverse community that has challenged and allowed me to gain a new perspective of this world. The University of Massachusetts Boston is more than a school that I attend to gain a degree; it is a place where I continually learn and grow. I quickly fell in love with UMass Boston and only a few weeks into attending, found myself referring to it as my school. During my first year I was able to meet new people through my freshman success community and eventually form new friendships. Everything seemed to fall into place and my worries disappeared, but more personal challenge arose as the year continued on.

My life has currently led up to now, the end of my eighth grade year. This year has been quite the experience. Academically, I've learned so many new things and gotten good grades. What I've learned about life though has been a completely different experience. This year has taught me what hard work and perseverance provide, how to be myself, and self-acceptance; All of which are lessons I will be able to bring along with me to high school and on.

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.

The nerve-wracking feeling of school hit me a month into summer. When I saw the email regarding my class schedule for junior year, AP Chemistry and AP Psychology were listed. Anxiety was stirring within me. Although I had a notion of the challenge I am about to face, I chose to give it a shot. Having the same teacher for both classes, I sat in the same spot for two consecutive periods, feeling clueless. I was walking out of the classroom when my teacher pulled me aside for a word, she gave me a pat on the back, “You’re the only person taking both classes this year, Good luck!” I was not entirely sure if it was an encouragement or a warning. “What have I gotten myself into?”, “What am I doing this for?”, Countless number of questions starts to formulate as I made my way back home.

When I was a freshman starting in Gladstone High School, all I thought my only goal was to actively participate in the classes that I needed to go to college. I was reluctant of high school since I did not know what to expect. I was not the athletic one but I was smart in academics. However, there was one event during the middle of my freshman year that presented a challenge I had to face.

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.

The high school I attended was very different. The last two years- junior and senior year- I was allowed to choose the classes I wanted to take. Having this opportunity I always avoided taking an English class. I never enjoyed it and one thing I disliked was writing papers on why I don’t like writing papers. I envied the people who enjoyed writing because as we get older that is a crucial thing we need. In many of my papers I was unable to maintain focus, need to use more transitions words, and lacked the proper knowledge on how to do a correct works cited. I have learned to fix some of my mistakes, but on other things I still need improvement. On my first paper, I struggled with staying focus on my topic. Second essay I struggled with transitioning my ideas from one to another. Lastly, I improved on both my lack of focus on my papers and I included more transition words.

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.

I graduated highschool a year early. I was seventeen years old and it was in the year of 2015. I decided in January 2015 that I was ready to be done with my high scool career,so I went to talk to my counselor and expressed to her that I was ready to walk the stage as soon as possible. The counselor starred at her desktop and got to work for about five to ten mintes, then she looked at me and said "Well, alright the earliest you can graduate is August 2015." I think I may have just stared at her blankly for a second, but I snapped back to reality and became eager to know the steps I would need to take to make this happen. Fast forward to the end of the school year, while everyone is excited for summer break, I was excited to enroll in my summer courses and get the ball rolling for graduation. August approached very quickly and before I knew it I was walking across a stage with a navy blue, silver, and white cap and gown on. The smile on my face was as bright as the sun and I walked with my chest as high as Mount Everest; I was proud.

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.

My freshman year in high school was rough compared to the normal high school things. On August 12, 2013, I almost lost my best friend; he had smoked for twenty some years when he had a devastating heart attack. I remember the fear and the thoughts of death that made my skin shudder. It was the second week of school on Tuesday when I got a pass at the beginning of my World History class immediately circled three or four times. The pass made me baffled considering I didn’t know about any appointments I had, and I didn’t ask my mom if I could go home early. Leaving the class and entering the empty hall, thinking about what’s going on as my footsteps echoing through the halls. What’s going on? Why would I be leaving this close to the end of school? As I walked past the office to my locker, I saw my mom with red eyes and purple bags under her eyes. At that moment, my stomach flipped and knotted up, because it’s at that moment when I realized something very wrong has happened. My pace quickened to the point of almost running; shoving my French one book and Algebra one in my backpack before sprinting to my mom. She met me by the big glass doors in the lobby of the office; laying a hand on my shoulder, she told me my dad had a major heart attack. I had felt my body instinctively lunged toward the door, but my mom held my shoulder tightly. As we walked to the car, my sister was in the front seat with her hair all messy in a bun and in her pajamas. She looked as though she had been

When I first enrolled high school I was following the current I didn’t have a plan for college or understand what I was going to do with my life. I had a challenging background when it came to academics; my scores were always “alright” but were never enough for Advance Placement courses. I wanted to create a structured path that I could be proud of. I thought I wasn’t going anywhere in life until I challenged myself academically for a better future.

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.

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