Personal Narrative Essay: Outreaching In High School

“I would be honored to invite Demetri Ford and his little sister, Tiana Ford, to the stage!”

Alfreda was a first generation college student. She had a difficult academic experience being one of only four African American students majoring in animal science. She used her social life to help her cope with the experience. Alfreda mentioned Zinck 's night which is a campus tradition named after a bar keeper in Ithaca that owned a bar that was a haven for college students. Alfreda found no interest in this event, however, she did participate in Slope day because it was an opportunity for her and her friends to celebrate the last day of school. Instead of participating in the university-wide homecoming, she mentions a separate homecoming sponsored by a Black fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha and the Festival of Black Gospel. She states:

When I first started thinking about college schools I never thought about going to MSU or Ole Miss. I wanted to go to the bigger universities, but I knew I wouldn’t do well if I went there my first year. My high school did not prepare me enough for University, and I hadn’t decided on a major either. I choose East Central Community College (ECCC) as the school I would go to for many reasons, and when I got here I knew I made the right choice.

It was May 25, 2018 at 7:47 in a steaming hot gymnasium when the name Anthony Joseph Sansalone was getting called from the loud speaker, the sixth to last person to receive their diploma I begun shaking the hands of all the board members and everything that I had known from the last 13 years at the same school was over and a new chapter of my life was stating to begin. A few seconds after receiving my diploma the Class President guided us to changing of our tassels from right to left then commencement was over and I was walking out with my future roommate at BGSU, Vincent Zhang, we looked at each other knowing that our high school career was descending and our college careers were lifting off together. High school was tuff for me due to the fact that I have know what I wanted to do since I was a freshman, I want to become an animator and work for an Academy Award winning company such as

“Hey! Do you want to go to the bonfire tonight? I can drive if you want!” I heard the question my friend asked me, and it gave me anxiety. Sure, I wanted to go to the bonfire. However, that meant I had to ask my parents if I could go. I did not want to answer their list of annoying questions. That meant I had to change my clothes from the sweatpants I was wearing. I did not feel like wearing jeans and a cute shirt. That meant I had to socialize with people. I did not have that kind of energy right now. What was the alternative though? My evening would otherwise go as follows: eat dinner, sit on the couch, and throw in a good movie. Pondering the question, I typed back to my friend. “Let me ask my parents!” I did not ask my parents and instead chose to not be social with my friends and stayed inside my comfort zone; that bothered me.

I was always told that things would change in highschool. You would meet new people, find new friends, and even discover a new class that amazes you. No one prepared me for what was going to happen Sophomore year though; no one saw it coming.

I have always been a studious school-minded person. I went to school at Miles Exploratory Learning Center aka Miles ELC from preschool to 8th grade. I was very hard working receiving all A's and B's throughout my schooling. I then moved to Tucson Magnet High School. I was top 25 out of 600+ kids in my class and got to wear an honors cord and be called up in front of everyone. I graduated high school with a 3.8 GPA something I am very proud of. I worked very hard in high school to make sure I graduated with good grades because I needed all the scholarships I could get to be able to afford college since I am white and middle class and not very many scholarships are offered to middle class families.

During this semester, I learned more about writing than I have throughout my whole high school career. The first thing we really covered was parallelism and that was probably the most used topic in all of our writing. To be completely honest I think this was the first time I had ever heard about parallelism and I still have no idea how to use it. We really focused on comma placement because in the beginning we were all just putting commas in random places, but now I feel as a whole we learned how to use them much more efficiently. We covered semicolons and where to place them, but still do not know how to use them either. During this semester I definitely improved my writing based on the fact that we wrote a ton, but I do not think my writing techniques have improved as much as I would’ve liked them to.

I never thought that the years would go by so quickly and I am senior now. For having three years in Western High, I learned a lot of things especially educationally and academically. I experienced many things in this school. There were a great times and bad times as well. English is my least favorite subject, which I struggles many times. When I looked back those essays in my portfolio, I couldn’t believe that I wrote a bunch of essays during my three years. There were some great essays and terrible essays. I noticed that on my essays I struggled on these three focus areas: organization, weak evidence and grammar/spelling.

Growing up I always took part in extracurricular activities to be more active and social in my life. I grew up with two brothers who had very different interests in things than me so I had to rely on friends and activities to help me from becoming couch potato.

As a young adolescent the smell of a delicious home-cooked breakfast would be the reason for me to get out of bed on a sunday morning. My father would knock on my door and command me to eat breakfast and prepare myself or else we would run late to our church service. As we hurried to church, due to my lackadaisical attitude, I was often forced to sit in the first row to the stage. This was always embarrassing because as a child I was reserved, and I dreaded walking in front of everyone. As the hour long church services took place, I would find myself languishing away only to be alerted by the soft glares of my dad.

During my searches for colleges to attend following my senior year of high school, WLC had come as a high recommendation from my older sister, Lauren, a current undergrad student at WLC.  At the time, I was looking to go into Digital Media as my major, though things have now changed.  At the time of my initial visit and admissions process I was quite impressed with the school and found it to be in my top 3.  I've been in the Lutheran church my whole life (WELS while in New York and LCMS after moving to Wisconsin) as well as attending private Lutheran school from grade school through high school, so it seemed like a natural continuation.  I loved the campus, small class size, and the general vibe I got from the visit.  However, at the time wanting to go into Media, I felt less enthusiastic about the

In recent light of writing my narrative essay; I discovered how much I like to write from my head. Instead of Having to constantly refer back and forth from resource material, statistics, graphs, and just plain data. I feel exuberant in being allowed to just freely write what I feel, or what has happened in my life, mostly my story. Writing essay after essay in Highschool felt tedious and dreadful; mostly since we were always writing about a book or some sort of report.

My first year working as a 5th grade tutor through the Student Outreach & Academic Reinforcement Program in Morristown, NJ was an unforgettable experience. To match each student with a tutor, we played a series of bonding games before the first week of the program. During the first week of tutoring, I was paired with two students. As the weeks passed by, I soon found myself tutoring 3-4 students because they each wanted me as their tutor. My main goal was to not only aid my students in completing their homework but I challenged them intellectually. With every opportunity, I engaged my students in areas they’ve shown weakness. While aiding one student in reading, two students were working on math problems while another student was working on spelling. Another major goal was for me to assist them in passing the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJASK) test. The NJASK is a standardized test given to every student of New Jersey from grade 3 to 8 that are attending public schools. The week before my students took their test, I told them to stay calm and to not overthink while they are taking the test because they’ve prepared for it for months. After receiving

“Why am I wearing this hideous outfit, mother, why am I wearing this hideous outfit?” I said as we pulled up to the school.