Personal Experience : My Experience At Hixson High School

Getting the ability to interview one of my past teachers was an awesome experience. I had the luxury of talking to one of my former high school teachers and Student Council advisor Tessa Gargano. We have a great reputation together and basically know each other like the backs of our hands.

It is important for adolescents to participate in extracurricular activities. Student who participate in these activities improve their academic scores and social life. Extracurricular activities can also help reduce many peer pressure related problems. “They enrich the lives of the students, their families and our communities. These activities create well rounded children who learn what their interests and talents are because they have been exposed to such opportunities” (Extracurricular Activities, Blogadmin). For most adolescents extracurricular activities should be required among what they do outside of school.

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.

Almost 9 years ago, I was just an average teenager fresh out of high school, just living life with no responsibilities other than the mediocre restaurant job I obtained during my high school years and a girlfriend I have been with since the 11th grade. After my senior year of high school, things took a drastic change in my life, which took a toll on how I can live my life. I found out that I was going to be a father!

More than half of American teenagers that attend school participate in some sort of organized activity (Gardner, Roth & Brooks-Gunn, 2006). A structured organized activity may include athletic teams, school clubs and organizations like student council or drama club, youth groups, and more. Psychologists are becoming more and more interested in how adolescents are spending their leisure time and how it affects their development. There are studies that support either being involved, over involved, or not involved at all in extracurricular activities and how it can impact what becomes of adolescents as they grow based on their participation in these activities (Wilson, 2009). The positive effects that are linked to extracurricular involvement is not just limited to school related activities. Time spent at a job, youth group, or even a tight knit class share the same qualities of an extracurricular activity, and in turn, the same desired results. Participation in activities has been linked to social and academic success, yet there are both benefits and hindrances that pertains to the discussion of structured activity involvement.

Since around my Junior year of high school, I became extremely involved in community service. I started by going on a Junior Service Retreat to Camden, New Jersey where I learned a lot about the city, and heard stories on drug and alcohol addiction. It started to open my eyes to what could really go on only 45 mins away from my hometown that seemed so innocent. I then continued serving and traveled to El Paso, Texas and Las Cruces, New Mexico where I studied immigrants. This is so far the best experience of my life. I entered into these stranger’s culture and life to try to help them, and hopefully impact their life. They went from strangers to friends and they didn’t realize it but they were helping me and impacting my life significantly. When, coming to The Catholic University I expected nothing less than the best service opportunities and that is what I received. I attended the Little Sisters of the Poor on Tuesday at 6:45-8:00 and that is when my love for service was re-sparked. After reading Lumen Fidei, the concept of “light” resembling faith and grace meaning life really stood out to me. While helping out at Little Sisters of the poor, I saw Lumen FIdei’s “light” in Mariam.

My high school experience has been anything but average. I attend Plymouth Canton Educational Park, a campus of 6,300 students from three different high schools all coexisting and learning together. This environment has shaped me into who I am today. It has taught me the true meaning of friendship and teamwork, the importance of time management, and pursuing what I am passionate about. I believe these experiences have thoroughly prepared me for the college experience ahead.

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.

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.

I was dodging students like I was a car and they were the deer that had just been caught in headlights. Running fast, as if my name had all of the sudden been changed to none other than Usain Bolt. Breathing so heavily you would’ve thought I was being chased after by a crowd of angry, smelly, ginormous teenage bullies, but oh wait, I was.

Throughout my time in high school, I have always been very active and busy in school activities. Sports have always been a big part of my life as a student. For my first two years of high school, I was a three sport athlete playing football, wrestling, and baseball. Last year I decided not to go out for wrestling and just play football and baseball. I am planning on continuing this for this year also. These extracurriculars helped me learn how to manage my time to get work done. They have also helped me with getting my priorities in line. I like to take pride in saying that I was able to maintain great grades while in sports. I would always flow between a 3.3 and a 3.5 GPA during sports. On top of being active throughout my years of high school, I have also been working from the age of 14. This has made me realize the priorities I hold in my life, and has taught myself discipline when choosing the activities which need to come first. My current employer is Pick N Save in Waupaca, WI. I have been employed there for a little over a year and a half. During my work there, I have learn cashiering skills and how to deal with customers. I have had the opportunity to be the leader of small projects that Pick N Save has had. I had to manage time and people to meet a goal that would benefit the company. Working this job has given me many skills and experiences that will benefit me in the future. Some of these skills include: being an asset while working on a team, communication

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.

It was just a plain old Saturday and my father and I were heading home after finished the grocery shopping. He began discussing selling his business because he was tired of the area the motel was in and the recent lack of business. I was honestly ready for him to sell the motel and find another job, but I was unaware of the consequences of leaving the dump that we called our home. In a straightforward manner he said, “This will be your last year at this school because we will have to move if we sell the motel.” In that moment I was completely devastated. How could he just rip me away from my friends and the plan I had for high school. When I first moved into the district, during my 5th grade year, it took me almost the entire year to make friends. I was antisocial by nature and at times I still am when I am not accustomed to a situation or an area and I wasn’t ready to relive the anxiety of being the new girl during the most stressful year in high school. Colleges always look at the Junior year of high school because it is easier to assess compared to senior year grades. Since I am the type of person that plans out every goal I need to achieve, it upset me even more. I was suppose to graduate from MacArthur High School as the Salutatorian, participate in a clinicals rotation program, and be an officer for NHS, SNHS, and HOSA. It was as if one by one I could see all of my short term goals dissipate right in front of me. I had to start from scratch on my high school plan at a

The past four years spent throughout the halls of my high school were filled with laughter, the undeniable mix of cultures, and the enforced golden rule, treat others how you would want to be treated. Throughout those four years I was granted opportunities to venture off to the city that has my heart, spontaneously volunteer my summer as a youth group leader, and meet the teacher who taught after retirement. And while I never could have predicted that life would turn the way it did, all I store is thanks because these few, however enormous events shaped me as well as my thinking towards the rest of the world.

“Welcome to the secondary campus!” from a teacher I was unfamiliar with. It was the first day of sixth grade, and I was entering a brand new school for my middle school years. I was confidently wearing my new pink Hollister collared shirt and a pair of all white Nike kicks. It was the first time my mother had ever let me get shoes with white soles, because I was prone to getting sneakers dirty. I had a lesser likelihood of that this year, because unfortunately we no longer had recess, which previously had stained any shoe of mine from the mulch.