Why Is It Queer With Its Twists And Turns As Every One Of Us Sometimes Learn

In high school, I decided to take honors classes to help advance myself. I was a struggle bus at first, but I honestly felt like it was the end of the world. I may or may not have shedded a few tears. My mom kept telling me everything will be okay and I knew it would be eventually. However, I soon began to realize that I am Molly Luther, and I can do this. With lots of tears and late nights, I began to get the hang of this difficult reading. A teacher of mine helped me tremendously with getting back on track. She made me much more confident in my writing and reading. Reading was something that I actually enjoyed again. I was able to find my favorite genres and found out some of my favorite

I didn’t know it at the time, but I believe because of my experience that set the foundation for the student that I am today. My brother started Kindergarten and my mother would drop me off at the babysitter so she could go to school. My first “academic memory” is remembering my mother sitting at the table saying she had homework, my brother not wanting to be bothered because he had homework. So when my mom didn’t have school and my brother had school together WE did homework. That became our time together, she didn’t send me to school, she created school at the kitchen table. She had books, worksheets, cards, and my own folder. My mother loves to remind me how I use to tell everyone that I didn’t go to preschool. Fast Forward five years, my friends were getting grounded for their grades and asking me why I never got in trouble for mine. My friends and I spoke with my mom and her reply was, “I believe if you do your best, try your hardest, and do everything you can to be the best you can- I don’t believe in punishing Bethany. Now, If Bethany didn’t try her best, try her hardest, do everything she could to get the best grades she can then we will look at why.” My friend looked at me and said “Oh, you're lucky! I wish I had your mom!” I never shared that all my grades were A’s, because I did my best, I tried my hardest and I did everything I could to get the best grades I could and I still do. If I need to study for 3 hours, If I need to seek out a teacher, plan a study group with friends or students who can help, I’ll do what I need to do. I appreciate the academic recognitions as they continue to motivate me. I am not afraid of hard work and I believe this will benefit the National Honor

Growing up, I’d always been expected to do well in school. Which isn’t out of the ordinary, every parent wants their child to be successful and have a beneficial career. So, since good grades were what my parents expected that’s what I got. All throughout elementary, I strived to do my absolute best in every subject. At my sixth grade graduation I was awarded the Presidential Award for Academic Achievement, in my junior high years I did well as well. My eighth-grade year I achieved my goal of obtaining a 4.0 G.p.a. The first year of high school was nerve-racking but I still managed to keep my grades up. However, Sophomore year was definitely a bump in the road for me. In all my ten years of being in school (including head start and kindergarten)

While in elementary school I was diagnosed with a type of dyslexia, which did not make school easy for me because I already had a speech impediment due to being tongue tied. I got taken out of class everyday in elementary school to work on my speech and reading skills. Most teachers just thought I was not intelligent and put me in the lowest reading groups. Third grade was a turning point for me; my teacher, Mrs. Eddy, saw that I was intelligent enough to understand the hardest material, and she did her own research online which no other teacher had done for me. She helped me come up with techniques to help me read with my dyslexia more than any other teacher or reading coach had in school. I even started to attend a speech class in Edinboro every other day after school. I eventually learned how to work around my dyslexia and speech impediment. By the time I was in sixth grade, I did not need any more special attention for my impediments, and I started to take school more seriously. Now that I am over that tedious obstacle in my life, I am always striving to be the best version of myself as I can possibly be. I have worked way too hard to be stopped by anything that stands in between me and my

In my life, I have faced many obstacles and have had to rise above those obstacles. The one that was the hardest for me is when I had to transfer from Believers Fellowship Academy the school was almost ready to shut down and was struggling to survive and didn’t make it one. I had to transfer to Sturgis Brown High School. When I went to talk to the counselor with my mother I found out that I would have to take a test for every class that was a requirement freshman year. To go into the year that I was supposed to go into which was my sophomore year I would have to either retake those classes, take these test, or enter into a brand new school where I knew about three people as a freshman. I was already old for my class age if I went into a sophomore

For this I also took the challenge of learning everything I could and build on my knowledge. Throughout my life there has being several achievements that I am proud of just like any other person but their is one I am most proud of. It was a little before high school that I made a major decision that changed my life forever, my life took a new course.. It was one of those situations that you never expect, I had being accepted to this new program in the district called Early College Academy. This program gave the opportunity to students to be able to take high school classes while taking college credits, with the opportunity of getting their Associate’s Degree with their high school diploma. This was not just a great opportunity for me but it was also a gift, the district was paying for my higher education. As I set myself in this journey I grew up mentally and started to act as a college student, also, I learned to be on top of my classes and go a mile further in what I did. Although, I also encounter new struggles, for example, I was expected to pass a college level test when I was barely starting high

I grew up in a military family with a low socioeconomic status and education. As a child of a military personnel, I had to move around the country every so often. Every move meant loss of friends, new school, new teacher, and a new environment. As a child, these unfavorable circumstances often caused me emotional distress and anxiety. This, along with a lack of access to basic learning materials and tools, usually made me fall behind in school with a great deal. However, my determination to succeed never let me give up; I became more adaptable to change, very diligent at school, more self-disciplined, and better at time and stress management as the years went on. This self-improvement not only helped me conquer the adversities I encountered

During the course of my middle school and high school education I have always found that teachers, peers, advisors, and even my parents have put labels on me. A.D.H.D., hyper, loud, distracted, daydreamer, and perhaps the worst and most sad… Failure. I used to believe these words and labels used on me and my grades though out high school reflected it. It wasn't until a teacher by the name of Susan Spees showed a little interest and hope in my that I excelled exceptionally in my grades. She believed in me and that was the little push I needed to try harder and actually focus on my work. Susan was a special educations teacher that had worked with many “troubled” kids. Kids that most teachers would call disobedient, loud, hyper, violent, dysfunctional. I

Moving on, my strength and determination did not magically appear one day. I had a lot of amazing people who are a part of my support network who helped show me what healthy self love and growth is supposed to be. One of the people I will be highlighting is my AP English teacher. Candice Ligator, was one of the best, and one of my favorite teachers in my high school career. She was a big part of my support system when it came to being a trans and queer student who had a lot of family issues. She was also a big inspiration to me as she told us stories full of struggles growing as a teacher. She talked about how starting off as a teacher at first made her cry every night, showing me that it takes persistence to be adept in a profession. Her choices on the pieces of literature she taught were engaging as they touched upon feminism, gay rights, and race. This allowed me to explore both my interest in writing and in social justice. Reading about personal experiences from Mary Shelley, Oscar Wilde, and Ralph Ellison was inspiring as it allowed me to see that I can

During my sophomore year, I had gotten into the wrong crowd. I started hanging out with a group of people that I thought I could rely on and trust but in the end they just brought me down. I started struggling in my classes, which caused my grades to fall. School wasn’t a concern for me and my parents were watching me go downhill. They would ask me what was happening when I would bring home my grade card or look at progress book, because I normally told them that I was doing great. My mother mostly had realized that my friends were not who I should be hanging around because they was not taking me down a good path. On September 12, 2013 was my Sophomore homecoming. My friends and I ended up going out for dinner and then we all headed to the dance. The dance wasn’t very exciting so we all thought that we would just head to Abby’s house. We ended up leaving Abby’s house and staying out all night in town, getting ourselves into things we shouldn’t have. Toward the end of my Sophomore year I started to fade away from that group and focused more on my schooling. I ended up getting my grades up too at least C’s. The following years I had to really push myself to get my GPA back to where I wanted it. Graduating high school I had a 2.9 GPA and at the end of my first semester of college, I had a 3.6. This just shows that hard work pays off and if you push yourself hard enough you can accomplish anything. This semester I plan on raising my GPA to at least a 3.7. If I didn’t have the support I did and still have today, I would have never been where I am right now. I am so thankful to have my parents and even my grandparents in my life. Starting my junior year, going into softball, from the first game to the last, my support system was at every game. This really impacted my life knowing that my grandparents would drive anywhere just to watch a game of ball for an hour or two. It’s not just sports it’s anything that I have that

In sixth grade, a teacher recognized me as a student who had the potential for academic excellence and I would have the opportunity to enroll in Academically and Intellectually Gifted classes. This felt exciting to me because I wanted to learn and experience everything I could. Unfortunately, the AIG program at my middle school ended quite abruptly after being told this. I continued through middle school feeling unchallenged and uninspired. However, I was able to excel and maintain an “A” average and participate in community services both at the school and Thrift Shop throughout my middle school career. In eighth grade, when I got my registration form for classes at Northwood and saw the abundance of subjects with differing levels of rigor I was ecstatic to start high school. I felt this could be the challenge I desired.

I was standing with hundreds of my peers in an extremely claustrophobic and humid hallway, awaiting to receive my high school diploma. My hands trembled as I slowly walked alongside the podium where my principal quietly congratulated me and handed me my diploma. As I proceeded to my assigned seat, I gawked at the high quality piece of paper that seemed insignificant at the time, but would knowingly open many doors for me in the future. I was nervous. Nervous about walking down a path without a final destination, all alone.

In retrospect, I would have never recovered hadn't I taken the first step. No matter how much I struggled, even with the support of my family and teachers, it was through my own actions that I improved. Instead of being content with complacency, I now constantly challenge myself to improve my weaknesses. It was because of this experience that I now see difficulties as opportunities for

School was very tough for me as I always seemed to have a tough time discerning patterns or concepts. But thinking about the phrase that I heard from the beginning of my academic career helped me persevere through the challenges. These challenges being completing homework assignments, reading a book, or simply doing projects for classes would not have not been overcame if it weren’t for the hard work and dedication of my mother. Because of her life as a child and adolescent, it had forced me to reflect on how privileged of a life I’ve had and to cherish any opportunity that I am given may it be from getting to do band, robotics club, or Drum Corps. There were many times in life where I struggled dearly and just could not grasp a concept, or understand a word. My typical impulse would be to ask my mother for help, but she would simply respond with that dreary quote. While it may have frustrated me that I could not receive the help I sought, it inevitably taught me to be self-sufficient and how to properly utilize my resources. Despite our many nights of bickering, it was my mother who deliberately saved my life from a world of

circumstances but over the past two years, I have become motivated to rise above my hardships. My inspiration was learning about the Clarkson School and my new goal was to become a better student. That being said, I continued to struggle due to a home life that,at times, affected my ability to maintain my focus and motivation. I registered for advanced placement classes and began to work harder in school. I was one of ten students taking AP Biology, a class that was being offered for the first time in our school. The class was poorly structured, resulting in students struggling and abandoning the class. But not me; I endured to the end with just one other student.