Personal Narrative: My Resilience In High School

Through my time growing up in Corona Queens as a kid I had come to realize something, I was beginning to get shorter as time progressed, the odd part was that I was the tallest in my class, standing at 5,10 in the 7th grade I was considered tall for a kid my age, in addition to only being 12 but regardless as I kept on coming home, I only felt as if I'm getting shorter. one day returning from the library and my reading session about the book Nature I was still in shock about what Henry David Thoreau has said about "sucking the marrow of life", and as I was attempting to think of how I can accomplish what he said, I fell and nearly broke my skull. it was then that I realized that what seemed like a footstep to walk into my home was a 10ft fall.

Going through high school the days were all the same, except for game days. There was just something different about the culture of the school. You could almost feel the excitement in the air. Every “Good luck tonight,” that was received made it feel like the whole school was rooting for me. This was my senior year and tonight was an especially big game. The game that night would decide if we made playoffs and if I could step on the court as a Hawk again.

I had no hopes or dreams growing up. I never thought too much about the future as a child. I lived from day to day just waiting for one to finish and another to begin. I grew up in this fashion and did not change at all until middle school. By middle school, I was aware that life did not revolve around school and that there were expectations for me to meet. Both parents and teachers expected me to rise above and beyond. Now my reason for waking up every day and working hard was to meet these expectations. I worked hard to keep up with the expectations, though eventually, the young child that I was could no longer handle the stress of all the work and slipped into melancholy. It was an endless cycle of work, failure, and shame. This continued until I graduated and went off to high school.

After sitting at the same desk for three years, I figured I was beyond seeing anything new. I was wrong. After that third year I saw a lot more than I thought I would. I went up to high school and everything was so much different. The grades were harder, the assignments were harder and the teachers were harder.

The summer of 2012 was the start of the downward spiral into my high school career. This ass hole guy decided to dump me and my dumb ass kept going after him when I know I shouldn’t have so I got hella drunk one night (as a 14 year old) and made this hilarious video with my bff that people hated apparently even though we looked hot. And so we got kicked out of cheer lol. Stupid mrs hatfield even had the vid on her phone like wtf lol. So yeah great start to high school.

Back within seventh grade towards the start of the school year I was put into a course called "Advanced Art" and I sat with a friend. My friend, Javier, wasn't suppose to have the class so he was sure to leave within weeks. During the time with him I noticed this big group of friends that seemed quite interesting to me. Around the time when he had his classes changed the song "Wrecking Ball" by Miley Cyrus came along and I drew a funny picture about it. I introduced myself into the big group and at first they seemed off about me but then they accepted me, especially this one girl named Tiffany. We had a few classes together so we would sit together and this was a start of a story of best friends.

As a freshman in high school I woke up every morning before all of my fellow classmates and came to school an hour early. But I didn’t mind, because now I was apart of the Broadcasting Team. I didn’t mind waking up earlier because being there made me feel more awake than ever before. My early morning dedication persisted, all four years of high school. The rush of adrenaline after running my first broadcast has continued to drive my desire to learn all aspects of broadcasting. I can’t imagine doing anything else. I will graduate college and then work toward “running the board” for a major news

Life is like an ocean. It ebbs and flows. The only certainty is that there isn't any. {except for death & taxes}.

Last year, I was shy of speaking English because I didn’t know a lot. I was afraid that the people would laugh about me If I said something wrong. But the last day of school, my English ESL (English Second Language) told me, “Saul, come”, so I went, “I just wanted to tell you that you have developed your English a lot, and next year you are not going to be in the ESL program anymore, I don’t want you to be afraid of talking English. Good luck.” I thought she was right, so this year I’m not scared of talking English anymore.

For the duration of time amidst graduation and resuming my education I chose to instead take the time to better myself by means of coping with the hand I’d been dealt. High school was discouraging to say the least. Academically I was a failure, which was frustrating for everyone concerned, since it wasn’t a question of my intelligence, but my lack of motivation. Fortunately, I had a large support system, without which I wouldn’t have graduated, however, this support system was unconventional, including my dad and most of the faculty at Golden High School, which left me somewhat isolated from my peers. I struggled relating to most of my fellow classmates on a deeper than superficial level, which left me with only a few genuine relationships

“It’s failure that gives you the proper perspective on success.” Never pictured The transition from middle school to high school would be as vigorous academically as it was. I went from a middle school mentality to blossoming into a young adult. I massively flunked Algebra back in High School at age 15. This was not my most inferior failure, but was an event that left a pit in my confidence. It wholly changed the way I approached my academics and outlook on life in general. New assignments were given to me left and right. I thought I could hold the information given to me quickly enough. My approach was to wing it and try to cram all the information. I was carefree I thought that I can just get through the class without trying as hard. Little

I am Olivia Plamann and I am 14 years old. If you saw me the first trait you would notice about me is my height. I get my height from my family. My family consists of my mom: Joy, my dad: Pat, my younger sister: Ella, and my two dogs: Packer and Baxter. My dog, Packer is eight years old, and my dog, Baxter is 3 months old. In my free time I like to spend time with my family, but I normally don’t have a lot of free time because of dance. I am on the Sartell Sabre Dance Team and I also dance at Ms. Melinda’s Dance Studio. Between Ms. Melinda’s and the dance team I normally will dance for about 20 hours a week.

When I was little, I was always a very curious girl. I was always that girl that was playing doctor and pretending to healing people. By me doing that, it started my interest in becoming a doctor. When I was in middle school I joined a medical program called JUMP. Even though I was only a teacher’s assistance, I learned a lot by grading the student’s work and overview what they were doing. At first I wanted to become a general doctor because my main goal, at the time, was to help people get better and prevent sickness. In the transition to high school, I lost a close friend due to suicide. It made me feel very depressed and I did not like that feeling. Experiencing that made me want to help out other people that are going through the same

As a twin, finding myself is difficult. When I was younger, my twin, Audrey, and I were constantly grouped together as one. We were always “the Matthews sisters”, never “Abby and Audrey”. I always felt compared to her. If Audrey was good at softball, I felt like I had to be good at softball.I found it very difficult to be an individual. Being shy also contributed to me feeling this way because I could never stand up for myself. Whenever someone called me “Audrey”, I was too self-conscious to correct them. When I was in eighth grade, I became very insecure and lost what made me, me.

Throughout my life, I’ve dealt with many challenges, which have resulted in different outcomes, but have also sent me in the right direction. Not everyone deals with the same challenges thus being because every single person doesn’t think the same. For everyone not just children, but also adults have obstacles in their lives; it could be financially or simply just something that could be easily fixed. None of us can say that we've never said “ Everything is going wrong,” at some time or another it's been said; maybe not in those exact words but it may have been related to it. As humans, we all have our times of despair; when we don’t like the way something turned out to be, however there are people in the world that have to face far worse challenges than we’ll ever face.