Personal Narrative: Non-Typical High School Experience

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.

High School has definitely given me many potentials. Transferring from Leuzinger High School to Moreno Valley High School has made me noticed that I’ve learned a lot such as: how to problem solve, how to not give up on myself, and how to accomplish difficult tasks. For example, when I attended Leuzinger High School, I wasn’t open-minded. This is because I didn’t take any useful opportunity for granted such as tutoring or extra credit. Then, when I moved to Moreno Valley High School, I finally took a chance to take any opportunity into consideration because more people influenced me, which made me believe in myself. The first opportunity I took for myself was going to tutoring for honors pre calculus. Because I played sports, I had to balance

I lived in Sterling, Illinois, in a decent sized house outside city limits. I never actually attended middle school, as I was home-schooled for sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. During home-school, I got to spend all of my day dealing with my siblings (which is worse than it sounds). If it wasn't my siblings, it was my dad, who I don't really talk to as is. Nothing is the matter between us, I just don't talk much. Most of my time not in school or dealing with my family was spent in video games or exploring a nearby forest. There wasn't much between those two, as I only had two friends I talked to. I worried for the longest time that I would go my middle school AND high school years with only those two friends. I wasn't one that could be described

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 the hallways emptied, the three girls gathered into Desiree’s blue saturn car. Ironically, though her car was beat up, she had managed to dress in only the best and most expensive clothes items. Many were skeptical of her work ethics, and the fact that her bag cost more than her car, but her friends were not. She had always been brutally honest so her friends never questioned why she would never wear the same outfit twice.

While dressing unfashionably, looking both uneasy and clueless, in a class with no more than twenty students, millions of questions suddenly appear in my chaotic head. Questions such as “what will happen to me?,” and “how can I understand this?” built up the doubt in me. However, who would have guessed that six years later, I would become a girl who has adopted a different vibe with more confidence and enthusiasm, which I thought would never be possible, six years ago.

It was August and school was just around the corner. I was going to be a freshman that year. It wouldn’t be too bad if I hadn’t just moved to the west side of Cleveland. Once again, I was going to be a new kid, but I guess we all were because we were freshmen. Later I found out that the school I would be attending, John Marshall High School, was a 9th grade academy. They separated us from the upperclassmen because the High School wasn’t big enough. Construction workers were in the process of building the new high school that year, so that grades 9-12 could be together. We were placed in an old middle school, it sucked! I wanted the real high school experience, but in this situation, I still felt like a child.

I guess my school experience has been one of many trials and tribulations, more of a story of redemption. My intent is to shed a beacon of light onto what I deem to be the beginning chapters of my educational journey.

“‘Um life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.’ I think that’s what the Forest said, I mean Gump, Forrest Gump, that’s what he said.” As I uttered the words, I knew I had embarrassed myself, along with the team, and I knew this was an experience I would never forget.

Growing up in a school where my classmates remained the same from Pre-K to 8th grade, I became accustomed to the people I was with every day. I had my own group of close friends as the years went by, and this prevented me from acquiring the skill of making new friends. When I went to high school, everything changed. I now did not have to walk in two straight lines to every class, worry if my name tag was not on, but most of all, I now had to make new friends.

I live in a suburban town whose families are well-off, each home has hedges trimmed to the needle and the downtown streets are lined with colorful-flags and flowerbeds in the springtime. It is a moderate-sized town but a quiet and simple place to live. Not a lot happens; it is quaintly bustling during the daytime, yet at night not even a car can be spotted parked on main street. The town appears to be an ideal, utopian establishment-- an embodiment of civilization. However, the only high school is bursting at the seams, the students are rowdy, and there is a surplus of rules but apathetic punishment. Troubled kids would wait through a tolerable one hour detention, then go out and reinstate their poor behavior. This evokes many questions about

Completing my high school education has come with an array of struggles and challenges stemming from different sources and having varying degrees of difficulty. One of the major struggles I experienced in starting my high school experience was finding a place and a voice for myself among a large group of people who predominately didn't look or sound like me. Taking higher level classes, I often found myself being the only person of color in that class. As I began to make friends and assimilate into the environment I soon realized that having a different background to my classmates and friends unfortunately bridged a gap between how much the people around me could truly understand me and sympathize with who I was. Going to a school with a predominately

Growing up in small-town Alaska has its perks. My home town of Petersburg is a strong and intertwined community, where hard work, service, art, education and culture are very important. Although it was a beautiful place to grow up, life for my family was different. This is the story of my journey out of abusive homeschooling and how experiencing serious challenges in high school affected and effects my personal goal to live a life worth living and do hard things.

Looking upon all your other applicants, you will notice something different, I am not your typical high schooler. I started taking college courses at Yuba Community College the summer after my eighth grade year and have been attending ever since. During my freshman year at Marysville Charter Academy for the Arts, I was able to maintain a 4.0 GPA while also taking three college courses. My days would consist of 8 hours at my high school and 1-2 hours of college lectures right after that. My time at home only consisted of my regular needs, completing assignments and studying. Taking these college courses not only helped me get a head start in my undergraduate studies, but are also helping me in graduating early from high school. It is set