Sophomore Challenge

My last year of highschool has been both the toughest year of my life, and the most enlightening. Not only did it mark the passing of my grandmother, the beginning of my struggle with depression, and the realization of mundane adult life, but it also marked the point where I decided to deviate from the standard.

It’s very surprising to be honest. If I rewind my life to the very beginning of junior year, I would have never suspected that I would encounter multiple hardships one after another, each excessively worse than the last. Yes, junior year was extremely tough domestically and socially but little did I know that my horrid problems at home would affect me academically. Undeniably it was my will power and my strong belief in never giving up which steered my grades and my life to the straight path and made me realize that mistakes happen in life for a reason, they happen so we can learn from them, so we can share our story with others and help them avoid the hardships we encountered. When I reminisce at my junior year, I don’t extract sadness or

A significant challenge that I faced that I thought I might not accomplish was in sophomore year. I believed I would not be able to pass my science class. I was almost failing the entire year but the last quarter was the worst. The teacher made a huge test that would help anyone that was almost failing and I studied every night until the test which was for about a month and a half. I was sure I would still end up failing because I wasn’t sure about many of the topics we had discussed. On testing day, we had time before the test to study even more and I had one of my friends test me with flashcards that I created; there was over one hundred of them. While taking the test, I was freaking out and ended up not answering some of the questions because

My journey through undergrad was similar to a flight going through a lot of turbulence. I came in knowing what I had to do, make Good grades, shadow doctors, and volunteer/participate in community service. However, there were a lot of trials and tribulations. It was not until after my freshman year when I hit rock bottom academically that my whole world

My sophomore year at Central High School did not start out the best. I was recovering from an awful grade point average, awful for me at least, I was sitting the bench in a sport that I had lost interest in, and overall I just did not enjoy school anymore. I personally did not see the point in coming to school at all. It took some time, but I finally started to get my grades up, my season had ended for football, and I knew I was not going back. After everything was starting to go my way I started thinking, “What am I going to do next?”

After reflecting a little I thought about the many different things that happen to me since freshman year. Since freshman year I now understand and accept myself for how I am. During freshman year I was trying to figure out where I fit in at but now I understand I am not meant to fit it. What has also changed is the amount of people I surround myself with. At this moment I would say I have two real friends. It was a hard reality to me at first because I was so used to having a lot of friends. Another thing that changed was losing many family members and having to deal with pain. One thing I can say from losing my family members was it made me stronger. Something that I

After this I began intermediate school at Wood Intermediate, which was a huge transition for me because I had to make a new group of friends because many of mine were going to a different school. This was a weird time for me because I didn’t know who to establish myself with because a lot of those people were already friends and I was the new kid. Eventually I found the greatest group of friends I could possibly wish for, and we are all still friends today. After intermediate school I attended North High School, where I was accepted to the Dual Enrollment program. And I have worked hard every day to reach my accomplishment of attending college, while also balancing a job half-way through my junior year and my senior

The first three months of junior year were very stressful and I’ve never been under so much stress before and it became overwhelming. I missed my parents and it was hard for me to live

Sophomore year was extremely difficult for me. You know how most people go through a rough patch at some point in their life? Well, that was me all of Sophomore year, everything just seemed too big and scary to deal with, and so I basically put everything off. The guidance counselors always use to say when we were going into high school that we would need to stay on top of things before they started to pile up. I just thought that they were just being dramatic to try and scare us into doing our work, but they really weren’t. By the time I realized this, however, it was a little too late, and I was faced with two options; attend summer school to regain the credit that I had lost, or face my peers when school started up again and be two credits

August 15, 2013 was the date that I entered high school. I had high hopes for the upcoming high school years to be my best years ever since I was in sixth grade. I expected that I can make more friends, join more club activities, and can choose classes that I really like. Although I was very enthusiastic and eager to start the all new school years, I also had a lot of worries and confusion about it also. The night before I start my freshmen year, the thoughts of failing classes, and be able to graduate high school kept

Unfortunately, the next year of my life I consider to be the worst thus far for a variety of reasons. Cast aside was the dream of freshman year, with my straight A’s, clear skin, and naive belief I was going to nine hours of sleep a night. I had woken up to a nightmare. I gained weight, my skin broke out, I took my first AP class and discovered all nighters and the effects of 7 cups of coffee, dropped my GPA and friends, but worst of all, became the consistent bench warmer of the Calvary Chapel Eagles Girls Varsity basketball team.I came to the conclusion, I wasn’t special. I wasn’t going places in life, and I by no means would amount to the future I had imagined.

Once it was as a freshman, just my overstuffed backpack and me experiencing an environment radically different than anything I had been exposed to ever before. Later it was as a junior, frustrated with a lack of self-confidence. I was plagued with social anxiety, paranoid over the smallest issues and mortified by the prospect of being approached by someone in public. It was painful to check out of a convenience store by myself, let alone meet new people or strike up a conversation with strangers. I used to think that this was going to be my life; every social encounter would be like walking on glass. Finally, towards the spring of my junior year, I clawed my way out of that pit, and I realized that the world wasn’t out to get me. I forced myself to get outside of my comfort zone, and I’m incredibly proud of myself for making that leap. And with the encouragement and support from my friends at school, I ultimately learned that hard work and initiative are two of the most important virtues on the path to success. And this all stems from the personal connections I’ve made with my peers at school, with these relationships dictating the way I have matured and developed mentally.

It took me the whole of the first semester of Junior year to bring myself back to the person i was. I made friends and started feeling that i could enjoy my schol life and do better. I feel that this whole experience opened a door to different and various other opportunities that I didnt perhaps wouldnt have gotten, had I not

Although even with these passions, school exacerbated the familiar anxieties that I was incapable of success and what I had was artificial. Exhausted, I wanted to be liberated from it. Junior year I held my breath when I submitted to my first poetry contest. I signed up for Computer Science that year and Calculus BC senior year, fearful, but soothed myself I could succeed even though I felt I would