Personal Narrative: My New Middle School

The next weeks were filled with classes and exercises, waking up before the sun and not getting enough sleep. During my classes I learned not only survival skills but skills that would help me pick my rate in the Navy. Although the exercising was brutal, it taught me self discipline and will power. Along with the skills I learned in class, I was also taught how to be a proper military member. I was taught that my shoes always needed to be shiny and my uniforms were always to be ironed. When I was not in classes, I was in tech training. Tech training was the time where I learned basic survival skills that would ensure my safety whether on the ship or on shore. In Tech training, I learned the skills of a Sailor. I learned to handle and shoot the M9 service pistol and M870 shotgun correctly. I also learned the basics of a seamanship which included basic water survival and fire fighting because a fire can break out on ship without any notice. While the time in boot camp was stressful, I can look back and see how it prepared me for the life ahead of me while I was serving on board the USS Enterprise. I left boot camp on January 23, 2002. years but it help shape me as a better

Throughout my two and a half years in Navy Junior ROTC, I have grown in both knowledge and respect for the

They challenged my capabilities, and made me overcome some of my worst fears. Excellence can come from breaking barriers, but it can also come from just chipping those barriers, or even nudging them. My four years in JROTC has taught me that as long as you are making progress towards your dreams, you are striving in excellence and self dedication. And even though your path may get rough, and have more obstacles in the way than ever before, I have learned to never give up hope and to continue to strive in motivation and

As my knowledge grew it came with reasonability and promotions. But, I still got in trouble but each time I learned from it. I’m 19 now and I’m in charge of a 20 million dollar jet aircraft. The Navy made me see that attention to detail should be your priority just behind safety. I learned that slow is fast on some jobs. You don’t always have time to do rework on something you rushed to get done. So taking your time could mean your life or your shipmates.

I am Cadet 2LT Siomara Munoz. I have been in the JROTC program for four years. Four years ago when I first stepped foot onto this school, I had no idea how much JROTC would mean to me. My freshman year I met some of the coolest and most caring people that mentored me through the program. They taught me how to drill, march and all the basic commands one needed to know. I was very involved with football concessions and after school practices. JROTC taught me many life lessons that I will never forget. Through this I have become the best version of myself and a leader. There are many things that I would have

I was never the type of kid to standout in school especially not in the hallway. I was never too tall, never too short, not too scrawny, but the one thing I like to do is make people laugh. Yet even though that was very fun and all I still leave my legacy behind, which as weird, as this sounds, I was the one kid teachers never took seriously, but for the most part I never got that bad of a grade, in middle school(except when it came to 7th grade language arts class).

Starting middle school was a mixture of anxiety and excitement. There was a brand new campus to explore, but we were also nervously anticipating the academic program that was about to begin. Most of my grade had been together since the age of four and by this time there were clear social divides. There were the girls who were seen as popular, and then there was everybody else. You could say that I was part of the popular crowd, though at the time I didn’t notice myself standing apart from the others. As a group of friends we got on well, we’d hang out, go to the cinema, have sleepovers, all the usual things friends do. Then things gradually started to change.

I was in MC JROTC for four years in high school I've seen a lot of my friends graduate and go to MCR the Paris Island and come back changed they come back with a sense of pride in who they are and what they represent and I wanted to be just like that so Throughout high school I pushed myself I became part of the drill team and the colors are commander I work to make a better today at court so the program will improve there were many challenges I face because I've learned that one of the hardest things to do is to lead a group of your own. But no matter what I made sure that any cadet under my charge was heading in the right direction one of my closest friends who are serving in the Marine Corps taught me that leadership is a lesson that never stops that there's always room to grow as a leader and I see that he was right

In my four years I have accomplish many things being in Horn Lake High School Marine Corps JROTC program. They have showed and taught me things that I can take further on in life with the camps and the leadership. I have seen first had on what it’s like to be a United States Marine in boot camp. I’ve also meet the CEO/founder of FedEx. JROTC has open me up to amazing opportunities that probably would have never happen if I wasn’t in the program.

From my experience, surviving middle school takes a mixture of luck, naive fearlessness, and an aggressive number of colorful plastic binders. I started my first day of fifth grade a jumbled mess of nerves, anxious about making friends and doing well in class, and inexplicably dressed head-to-toe in red, white, and blue swag my mom got when the Summer Olympics were in Atlanta. I mean, my backpack matched my shoelaces, which matched my pants and my shirt. I might have even had a hat. A hat. A precisely matching hat. That I wore all day. Needless to say, I was not a particularly cool child. I studied hard, had a core group of equally nerdy friends, and constantly worried about whether I was doing the right thing or, perhaps more accurately, becoming the right thing. Was I not studying hard enough to get into college? Or maybe studying too hard, missing out on my youth? Would I grow into my teeth one day? Would my skin eventually stop looking like greasy peanut brittle?

As I went through 1-9 grade school I finally found grit. Going to St. Mary’s during 1-6 grade school getting up at 6:30 every morning just wanting to hit the snooze button so I could get that extra hour of sleep in. After getting ready for school, I would get on the bus, three stops later we would pick up these annoying foster kids that gave me a headache every day because they would shut their mouths that I would have to push through school with. Then building up all the energy sitting in 1-2 classrooms the whole day waiting for recess so I could let it all out. Since I pushed through those challenges, I was able to move on to middle school. During my two years of middle school three out of the five days of school, I would get up at 5:30 and

Choices. Regardless if the choice is good or bad, everybody makes them. There are times where the choices people make can alter their lives forever; this was one of those times. It was April 26, 2013, a normal friday for me attending West Middle School in my sixth grade year. At the time, I was the definition of an attention freak; I always wanted the spotlight on me. For a reason still not known to this day, I wanted people to feel bad for me. I thought that by gaining sympathy, I would be able to make friends and be the talk of the school. What I didn’t realize is that not all attention is good; some can be devastating. Unfortunately for me, I was not thinking about the effects of the choice that I was about to make. I couldn’t have possibly

So the first thing I want to talk about is how middle school changed my life. When I was first coming into middle school, I was really scared and nervous about a lot of things like not being able to open your locker, bad people, swearing, and a lot of other stuff. Once I first came into middle school, things were, well a lot different than expected. I had no problem opening my locker, the “scary” people weren’t that scary, and swearing was just blocked out of my mind. I really wasn’t that nervous the next day and I just went on going to classes and learning like I usually did. Now about a few months into the school year, I kept on meeting people and making more friends. Little did I know that I would meet my best friend. Like BEST FRIEND.

Within the first hour of arriving to basic training, I realized the immense impact the military would have on my life. Faced by people demanding seemingly unattainable feats on a daily basis, I pushed myself to endure the physical and emotional demands of the US Air Force. Above all, the most challenging aspect was being subjected to the proverbial fire hose of knowledge. There were days I wished I could go back to the family dairy farm I grew up on, where the fruits of hard work were tangible goods. I survived the trials and tears of basic training and continued on to the next deluge of education. I repeated this routine for the remaining six years of service and beyond, consistently flourishing under pressure. I was continuously reminded of the core values of the Air Force: integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do. It is these principles, along with dedication and enthusiasm, which have since guided me through medical school and prepared me for residency training in anesthesiology.

My military service reshaped who I am. My training stripped away any sense of entitlement and I learned more about myself in four months than I’d ever known before. It not only gave me discipline and taught me to perform under pressure, but everything I did wasn’t just for me anymore. I was working hard for the marines next to me in my platoon. The time came when each of us hit a breaking point physically or mentally.