My School Experience

As we pulled up to the massive elementary school building, I begged my mom to let me stay home from school, just once. As usual, she said no. Realizing my attempt to get out of school was futile, I shouldered my backpack, swung open the door, and trudged over to the front door. I would rather be anywhere else than here. For the majority of my life, I attended public schools. It wasn’t rare for me to fail a test or even a whole class. It was because of these failures that I would get even more demotivated and threw away the idea of working hard or completing quality work altogether.

Students who are becoming freshmen often ask “what’s it like to be in high school?” High school is not what you think. Freshmen don’t get pushed in lockers, there's not that one popular girl who shoves other students books out of their hands, and the cafeteria is not the most embarrassing place to be. High school is not an amicable. If you really think high school is a amicable place where students smile at each other, think again. Here is some advice from my high school experience.

1. Provide a short description of your high school experience. How have you grown/evolved from 9th grade to this point? List some of the highlights of your high school career.

I can vividly remember the feeling of excitement that overwhelmed me when I first walked onto the Peddie campus. When I got out of the car and had people greeting me, I knew that Peddie would be the place for me. My tour guide, Oliver Crane, completely convinced me that Peddie was the optimal place for me to do a PG year. After visiting the school, I immediately started on my application and eventually realized that I was accepted. About a week before heading up to Peddie, I started researching the school. I found mostly positive things, but also some negatives. However, this is expected of any school. I read that it can be difficult to make friends and that it is also hard being independent without having parents always by your side. By prejudging the school before I actually got there, I created so much built up anxiety and hesitation. By doing this I felt like I was already going into the new school year completely closed off to the environment. I eventually realized in order for me to have a successful and meaningful experience here I would have to be open to a new environment. I was extremely worried about whether I would make friends or not, whether people would like me, and whether the academics would be too challenging for me. After being at Peddie for two weeks now, I can say that these things do not present an issue for me because my maturity, determination to engage in the Peddie community, and motivation to excel academically has led to my success thus far.

There are about 180 days of school in a year and this was the last one of my 7th grade year. I had just finished my 6th hour exam and I was instructed to help clean some of the basses. Once that was done it was almost time to leave. As time winded down, I stood anxiously at the door waiting for the bell to ring. When it rang, we all ran out of the school. Summer vacation had started. When I got home, I finished packing up my clothes because the next day, my dad and I were going to Colorado.

A gentle tap on my shoulder from my mother woke me every morning, providing me with the sheer motivation I needed to develop the desire to attend school. Every day was a fight for me to push through school as I was the wallflower that never seemed to blossom with my peers. This rejection in my early school years prevented me from focusing on relationships and rather on grades and my passion for music. I determined myself to be an outcast since I could never make a friend that desired to talk to me above anyone else on their spare time, causing me to take a turn in my self-confidence and acceptance.

There is a new student who will be coming into my first-grade classroom this Monday and I must say, I am quite nervous as to what it will bring. This student’s name is Jack and he has a background that differentiates him from other six-year-olds that I have encountered in my professional experience. Jack is a family name that has become very well known in every American household in the last year. Yes, Jack is that Jack. The Jack that escaped from being held captive by a man named “Old Nick” that had kidnapped Jack’s mother 7 years before. Jack was born into captivity and all he has ever known in his life was the 11 by 11-foot room that he was born into. While Jack has established some basic skills such as language and reading, thanks to lessons from his mother, Jack will need more help than the average six-year-old in order to succeed in his elementary school experience. I am confident that through providing Jack the extra assistance and accommodations that he needs in the classroom, we can guide him from elementary school into his junior high and high school careers and give him the tools he needs to become a successful member of society.

School was rolling up and since I lived alone now was kinda different. I was homeschooled and on a mountain near Seoul. I got startled by Candy (my rabbit) who stomping on the wooden floor. I hesitantly get up from my bed and walk over to Candy and feed him some food. I look at the time, 6 AM, its was still early so I changed into my new uniform from Hikari Academy. The school was for people that have super powers and abilities. Mine was Telepathy and Animal control. I kinda got it from my parents about slightly different. I cook some eggs and start eating. When I finish, I get up from the chair and stretch. Because I was homeschooled, I had no friends in the past. Well I did have some animal friends. When I go to school I usually get headphones so I don’t read everyone’s mind which was kind of annoying hearing everyone’s thoughts. After 30 minutes I put my phone in my pocket and grab a soft scarf. I head out the door and the cold air goes through me. I quickly put on my headphones, almost forgetting. I walked my way to the school, many others were also going to school. I arrived at the massive school and realized how nervous I was. It was quite frightening. I see a guy that was at least 6ft tall. I walk in the school. And some people look at me weirdly. It was probably because of my tattoo I got before, making them think I’m in some kind of gang. Until I realize that a dove was on my shoulder. I eagerly shoo away the bird. I really disliked attention from others. I look

“I have grown into a being that is sitting on top of a throne.” Entering school on September of 2016, I started off slow and bad thinking it was just the aftermath from the long fun summer I had. After a few months, my grades began to drop, I was missing school, and I was making bad decisions. Academically and personally, I was digging my own grave without my knowing, but soon I gathered my faults my mistakes and my ongoing issues and tried to start clean. I started to realize more and more as I went through my high school years up to now how important some things may be and how somethings will not matter in the future. My Junior Year I learned to distinguish between what I know will help me in my future vs what will not help me and to remove what will not be important to me. I lost friends, chances, a little bit of dignity, but through the year I learned that it is okay to lose friends, I learned that I will begin to take opportunities that will present for me, and I gained back dignity that was lost. I created a new atmosphere for myself and began to appreciate what really needed to be appreciated. Junior year may have been the hardest year of my whole education.

Surrounded by all of the “Americans” I waved to my mother eager for her to finally leave and let me experience my first day of school. I had waited for the day I would finally be able to speak English, the language that I heard all of the other kids speak at the local park my mother took me to. English seemed like the most mysterious concept for my sister and I. So much so that her and I would start making up words in public, screaming gibberish at each other, hoping that people would think we were speaking the same language as them. Even though I was born in the United States, I was raised as a Pakistani, not an American. There were constant reminders by my parents that I am not an American. So when I was finally able to let go of my mother’s hand and walk off with the American kids into school I had the biggest smile on my face. I was so excited to be able to escape the circle I was in. Being 5 years old did not mean that I didn’t understand I was different. I knew my clothes were different then what the people on T.V. wore;

When I was five years old, I loved school. The bright colors of the classroom appealed to me, and what I was learning fueled my soul, making me feel as if I could take on anything my adult life could try to throw my way. The only thing that could make it better, I thought, was actually going to school. My family didn’t believe in traditional brick and mortar schools. They believed that by going to public school, their children would inevitably become corrupt. My begging resulted in being allowed to strap an old backpack on and walk out of my back door, around the exterior of my house as many times as I wished, and then back inside through the front door. This lasted a few days before I realized that this result was a ripoff. Even as a small child, I valued quality education, and being treated fairly. I taught myself math until age nine and even though bystanders tried to help me, I was tested and therapy was recommended, but I received my GED and have started college.

Almost three years of high school had gone by with nothing but straight As. However, my Junior year ended with a B printed firmly on my report card, yet I was proud nonetheless. I had worked my hardest in that class, harder than I had for any other. I stood by my mark, and if my best was a B, I was satisfied with that result. My pride would have been inconceivable to the Alexander of the years prior, though. I’ve been an obsessive perfectionist as far back as I can remember. I remember checking my elementary school math homework again and again, just to make sure that there were no errors at all. It was easy to be perfect when the work I got was easy and limited, but when middle school came and went and high school began, it was a different story. By the beginning of tenth grade, it was not uncommon for me to stay up several nights in a row, toiling in the office downstairs over a product that was already good but not quite flawless. As the minute hand whirled around the clock and the coffee supply dwindled, I became more tired and depressed over a goal I always fell short of. My teachers said that I did great work through, and that’s what mattered. Perfect work meant perfect grades; perfect grades meant a perfect college; a perfect college meant a perfect job, and a perfect job meant a perfect life. Schoolwork was all I thought about. Even the necessary act of eating was always accompanied with a pencil and paper. When winter break arrived and I had no papers to write, no

Being the eldest of three children I am the guinea pig of the family.. (ellipses) Being the first to start school, to begin middle school, and enter into high school. Not having an older sibling to tell me what to expect along the way, I had to be the first to experience these things, and figure out how to handle new situations on my own. I remember being in seventh grade being terrified to begin school at the high school. Riverside, at the time, seemed much larger than Lamuth and had many more students, especially older and taller kids, being a bit intimidating to my, once then, barely five-foot self. (imagery) I did not think I would have enough time to get between classes before the bell rang, as crossing over from John R. to Riverside is a long walk with many kids walking at a very slow pace. I was also very nervous that I would get lost or end up in the wrong class.

By High school, my friend group had competently changed. I sat at a different lunch table every day and some days would eat lunch with a teacher. Making lasting friendships was hard for me partly because I was shy. I had hoped my freshman year of making new friends on the soccer team. I faced my first real disappointment in my life when I did not make varsity and I made JV. The friends I was trying to make all played on varsity and I increasingly felt more alone and not worthy. My first three years of high school were pretty bleak. I did not have a social life outside of school. My happy place was going home and binge-watching Netflix after soccer practice. My junior year of high school was the toughest. I am dyslexic and have dyscalculia, so basically that means school is really hard for me. Junior year destroyed me in the classroom and to make matters worse, I also hurt my ankle taking me out of soccer the one outlet I had. I was angry because I was finally starting to play on varsity and score. I was heading to a bad place in my mind thinking the world had a personal vendetta against me. I knew I had to do something to change the path I was on because I could not keep living as a shell of a person. I decided in an act of desperation to sign up for church camp. I did not go to church anymore and my view of God was quite skewed. I believed there was a God because believing he created the world made the most logical sense to me, but I thought he had abandoned us on earth. I

The program directors were determined to drag us into new territory--and new people. Assignments included frequent playtesting with new faces from other programs and team projects with teacher-assigned classmates. I found that talking to them wasn’t as stressful and painfully dull as I’d predicted. Our