Graduation Speech : High School College

I have been going to school since I was four years old and, that means that I have been attending school twenty to twenty two years, including kindergarten, middle school, high school and now college. As every student, I had my ups and downs in school; I had some failures and some successes. One of the failures that affected me the most and that I will always remember was the time that I was in high school during my junior year. I failed almost all my classes and, I only passed two classes and with a C. In the other hand I had some really good success. The most recent one and the one that I am still happy about is getting my Family Development Credential. We learn from our mistakes and also from our successes, these two times in my life

Throughout my entire life, I had always been taught to stay quiet and listen to everyone around me. Now, it is my turn to tell everyone what it is that I have learned during that time. Since I grew up with a Mexican family it was hard to attend school and transition from knowing my native Spanish tongue to English. I spent most of my time in an English school environment until I got to high school. In high school, I realized how important it was to embrace my native tongue. Not everyone does that, especially during high school, thus influencing my decision to go to college and major in Spanish. My plan is to graduate college, receive a teaching credential to teach high school students not only how to learn the language or improve on it but

Graduating high school was a big defining moment in my life. It is a step closer to the real world, a step closer to my future and that is what most exciting about leading up to this day. Preparation to graduating high school was difficult for me there was a lot of ups and downs, but it got easier once I took things more serious and not as a joke. Having that feeling of knowing that your family members are proud of you is an amazing feeling and having my grandmother explain to me how she felt on my graduation day was heartwarming. The day of graduation I was a nervous wreck, but it was all worth it in the end. Graduating changed my life in a lot of different ways that I wouldn’t have expected but only for the better..

Colin Powell once said, "There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure." The secret to success is preparation; however, preparation for college does not come easy, and there is only so far you can go by preparing yourself. I tried that, and if you look at my first college semester grades you can see that did not work. High school really is only there to prepare you for college; however, not everyone goes to college, and there is only so far you can go with a high school diploma. You really have to go to college to succeed, but when you come to college everyone is on different levels academically. Some come to college not even knowing what they want to major in. That is absolutely inexcusable of the high school system, which should better prepare students for college and their future careers.

When I was in high school, I would hang out with my friends and they didn’t like to do their school work so I wouldn’t do mine. We would go hang out or sleep in class. I thought that I was cool because everyone knew who I was and would invite me to parties. I started to fail most of my classes and get into trouble because of the type of people that I chose to socialize with. I would tell jokes in class about the teacher and get sent to the office.

I was an average student in high school. I took a few challenging and AP courses, but I wasn’t an overachiever who earned an A in every course, however, I also wasn’t failing any of my class. I was the student who did the minimum work that was needed to pass the course. This eventually resulted in meeting with my assigned school counselor only once a year because it was mandatory. However, during my junior year I really began to focus on my future because I knew my years as a high school was coming to an end. But because I didn’t have a relationship with my assigned school counselor, whom I felt was too busy with other students on her caseload because her office door was often close, I chose to seek out to another school counselor on campus. The high school counselor who helped answer my questions regarding college and gave me information about the SAT test dates and fee wavier was Mr. Rios. Due to help I received from Mr. Rios, I later joined the school volunteer club Mr. Rios was the faculty staff in charge of that later helped me build my resume, life experiences, and network. With the relationship with Mr. Rios, I chose to interview him because he inspires me to continue working hard in graduate school so that I too, can have a similar position like him as a high school counselor in the near future.

Over the last few years of high school I feel like I changed in a positive way because in the beginning of my freshmen year of high school, I didn’t really think of how much my grades would affect my chances of graduating and going to college. I didn’t think I would make it this far and it didn’t matter to me because dropping out and getting a GED seemed like an easy way out for me at the time. But I realized that life could be hard out there when all you’ll have is GED that gets you little job opportunities when you could just finish school, work on getting your diploma and maybe go to college to study for what you’d want to do for a career that can get you tons of job opportunities because of the experience you have.

While a necessary step in any dedicated academic’s life, the graduation of high school is not always a cakewalk to accomplish. With the obstacle of mental illness in my way, I found the task of graduating high school and moving on to college to be a mammoth that I felt not healthy enough to conquer. In the second half of my high school career, I found myself in physical and mental states so poor that I missed approximately one third of my desk hours in my junior year. The possibility of returning to school, let alone graduating with my class, seemed bleak.

Four years is such a small portion of many people’s lives, but the four years of high school can greatly impact one’s life. High school ,for many people, is a time to mature physically and mentally. Many find out who they are as a person and maybe who they want to become. High school teaches life lessons that can not be taught anywhere else and that people would not want to be taught later in life. I started high school as an anxious freshman and transformed into a confident senior in four short years.

Society then and now is filled with people that chase their dreams of being famous, smart, or a pro sport competitor. What separates those who succeed and fail is the amount of dedication they put in, whether or not it started early in their life. For me it began when I was a freshman in high school. I was very active in playing in the marching and concert band. I played the saxophone and impressed a few other students during class. About a week later, after my class period ended, two friends of mine came up to me and suggested that I try out for the show choir band. I asked what it was and found out that it was a band playing with a singing and dancing choir. I was not at all hesitant to say yes and I remember having to ask my mom if it was okay that I was trying out for the band and she surprisingly said yes. I was filled with excitement being offered an opportunity like that and so I quickly walked to the choir room after the school day was over, played my audition piece, and in the end I made the band. Later on I talked to a few of my other friends from band and encouraged them to try out and so they did. They all ended up making the band as well and so the beginning of a new show choir band began. Once all of the try outs were concluded my friends and I were all given a schedule and informed when the first practice was. I looked at the schedule thinking that practices were not going to be long, but looking at the first practice made me realize that this band is going to

My legs where tired, my mind was racing, my hands were shaking, and I had nowhere to run. Walking up the stairs to a pair of large glass doors just terrified me. I know I was going to be able to survive. I had to; there is no other way. Every step I took towards the entry way I could feel my heart rate accelerated as I cautiously looked around for a seat. I sat in the third row of an auditorium looking room. There were around twenty to thirty people sitting around looking at a blank projection screen waiting for my new teacher to arrive. In my head I had a description of a college professor which would be a older gentleman with brown laptop case and look intimidating and make me want to cry on the first day by assigning paper after paper for the enjoyment of watching me fail. I didn 't feel prepared at all high school was so different students didn 't live there and no one to remind students to do all homework the homework there assigned. My high school failed to prepare me because in high school we didn’t receive homework, and didn’t mentally prepare me for the new independence that I now possess.

When children start off school they’re exited to go learn, meet new friends, and experience what school is really about. As they go into their middle school environment starts to change. Girls and boys going through changes, asking many questions because they want to know. By the time students enter high school, they’re unsure of what they want to do in life and that’s completely understandable. When they have reached their senior year in high school and they still don’t know what they plan on doing in life, that’s when they decide to graduate from high school, but not continue with their education because they are undecided on the career path they want to take. In 2013 about 65.9 percent of high school graduates enrolled in a post-secondary educational program, whether it be a community college or university. High school doesn’t prepare students for college, that’s why most students don’t make it past their first semester in college. High school students still have much to learn and when they make the transition from high school to a 4 year university it overwhelms them.

College hasn’t really been much of a choice for me—same way for walking the stage at graduation in high school. Yeah the “option” to opt out has “always” been there, but God forbid I get to make my own choices as an adult by my mother (but that’s something else entirely). My relatives’ continuous badgering, threats, and my patience running out after fifteen years of their actions “convinced” me to start to college anyways. I mustn’t leave out the fact that I also convinced myself that if I started college early, I would potentially graduate around the same time as one of my favorite cousins and one of my friends. I started taking dual credit courses in high school to shut my mother up about advanced schooling, ended up liking the teachers

In the year 2012, I was supposed to be excited and proud of myself. 2012 was the year that I graduated from high school. During the time following up to my graduation I was living in the moment I was pumped up because I was going to be done with high school. High school is known for being the best time of anyone’s life, and indeed it was. Well the time came around for me to check out of all my classes and the final thing was to practice for the actual graduation. Life seem to change more and more it started to feel more and more real. I realize that I was no longer going to be a young teen I was growing up. I had to start to think about college and work all these things were running through my head as I was practicing for graduation. I decide to stop thinking about that and just enjoy the moment. Well the day finally came for the big day I had my graduation and let me tell you it felt so unreal I never seen so many proud parents cheer and yelling when they heard the child’s name being announced as they received their diploma.

In a small high school, everyone knows each other and every move made is scrutinized. Many people in my high school tried their absolute hardest to fit in, but for me uncomfortableness has always lead to a missed opportunity. I ran my high school. I was the kid who was president of everything, sat on the board of education and even had a little mailbox next to all the teacher’s mailboxes. Intense and extroversion are two words that I have always related to, but when the opportunity came to be crowned king of my school, I just wasn’t interested.