Graduation Speech : High School

High school is supposed to be the place where you have fun and a time in your life you’re supposed to enjoy. Movies often trick you into believing that high school is an amazing time in your life and there is nothing but parties and fun. In Bring it on, they portrayed the fun and exciting part of high school cheer-leading, however they intentionally leave out the tough times high school students’ face in school and in their practices. In other popular movies, such as High School Musical the students have no pressures other than the next basketball game. In reality, this doesn 't happen. The constant pressure is affected by the grade level you are in. In high school, students can be classified based on the pressures that are faced in each grade level into the categories of freshman, sophomores/juniors, and seniors. I am here to help you make your high school experience less stressful.

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

Last semester, my grandmother had an accident, rendering her unable to walk. As a result, my mother had to leave immediately for India to care for her. Soon after her return, my father left for India due to the passing of my grandfather. This was a very emotional period for our family, and keeping everything together was challenging.

I had to handle things I thought I wouldn't have to deal with for years. At 15 I shouldn't have been taking care of my mother, but it landed on my shoulders and I did what I had to do. Somethings had to be sacrificed. School and friends came second and while they were important I learned that the difference between being a child and an adult is understanding what is a priority. This experience showed me that some challenges we must face on our own. I could not fight my mother's cancer for her. Seeing her courageously go through all of this gave me an amazing example of perseverance and fortitude and an excellent example of what it is to be mature. She's taught me that every individual has a time where they must step up and grow up and though it may not be when expected, life doesn't give you anything you can't handle. I am proud to say I’ve persevered and become a better, more capable person because of

My family had to make a tough decision. We either, move down to Florida and help my Grandma recoup and get back on her feet, or stay in Colorado away from the family when they need us the most. My parents made the decision to move down to Florida. We got down there and it wasn’t what we thought it would be. It was far worse. We weren’t happy like we thought we would be. So, January of my sophomore year, we moved back to

In April 2013 during the spring break of my sophomore year of high school, I lost my father due to a heart attack. This brought my life and my family to a complete standstill. Not only was this devastating but it put a financial burden on my family as my mother struggled to keep my brother in college. It was only by the grace of God that he was able to

Day after day I had always regretted not finishing school. Every day that went by Reminded me how much I needed to complete my education. I would remember applying to jobs and always seeing that dreaded sentence saying “must have High school diploma or equivalent’’. The memory of those days still feel as if it was just yesterday that I was without education. Growing up I never realized how much I would need education in my life. Education is needed to overall make a decent living in order to survive. All of the jobs that I was working at the time were either fast food or hard labor. In my early 20’s I soon figured that there were no short cuts to success. If I wanted to make decent money, I need a decent education. I then started researching how to get my General education diploma. Since I was too old to return to high school to finish that was my only option. I remember it was like yesterday walking onto the Community college property where the test was given to inquire about signing up to take it. Everything on campus looked so well put together in my eyes. I knew at that time that I wanted to be a future college student. I felt like I belonged there, but I was missing one thing a GED to qualify for enrollment. Being in the scenery of an actual college environment showed me just how much I was missing and made me more determined to follow up on my dreams of one-day graduating from college. As I neared the testing centers door my heart started pounding. I noticed that I

With regards to high school graduation, Balfanz, Herzog, and Iver (2007) followed 12,972 Philadelphia students enrolled in traditional middle schools from six grade (1996-1997) until 1 year beyond their expected graduation from high school (2003-2004) in order to understand what indicators would affect their projected graduation date. Unlike many of the early K-8 schools, the population Balfanz et al followed consisted of "64% African American, 19% White, 12% Hispanic, and 5% Asian students. Additionally, 97% of the sample attended schools that were majority minority" (2007, p. 227). Balfanz et al found that the four variables, or "flags," that had the highest predictive power and yield were: sixth grade attendance, failing math in sixth grade, failing English in sixth grade, and receiving an out-of-school suspension in sixth grade (2007). Second, the more flags that students had the lower their chances of graduating on time became. More specifically, one-flag, two-flag, three-flag and four-flag students had a 36%, 21%, 13%, and 7% chance of on time graduation, respectively (Balfanz et al, 2007). In debriefing of this study produced in 2010, Balfanz summarized the importance of his earlier findings: "during the middle grades, students in high-poverty environments are either launched on the path to high school graduation or knocked off-track" (Balfanz, 2010, p. 7).

When did you decide your major in a university? Some people find their dreams when they’re kids, and for them this question is meaningless. I chose my major when I was in a senior year of high school. To tell the truth, in Japan, this is late. In Japan, students have to state a major when they apply for a university, and majors hold their own enrollment examinations. This means that high school students have to finish deciding their major while they are in high school. In order to be ready for this, teachers ask high school students their first, second and third choices of universities and majors right after starting their freshman, and then they will study for the enrollment examinations, which is the biggest purpose. What if students cannot decide these major yet? They probably choose well-known universities and interdisciplinary majors. However, most students are careless about how much the decisions mean to their lives. If they have specific plans or views of their lives, they can begin preparing for the next steps that mean they are able to be a few steps ahead of other students. More preparing has a lot of worth. Therefore, the best way to succeed in Japan is thinking about an educational decision early because of the better quality of study, the connection among majors, universities and jobs, and the correlation between majors and our personalities.

High school teachers try to explain what college is like, but it 's hard to imagine until you actually start college classes. I 've learned that college has some similarities to high school but overall, it is a completely different atmosphere. Entering college, you will see a major change in the way that you are treated. Unlike high school, you are treated as an adult. Your professors give you the responsibility that you never had before, such as doing your homework or not, allowing you to leave class without asking, and most importantly, giving you the choice to come to class or not. However, a lot of people take advantage of not having to go to class every time but being in class is very important, especially in EN 101. You don 't miss out on the notes that the professor gives, you get time with your classmates to evaluate each others writing, you have time to talk to your professor and ask questions, you get to see examples of papers which will give you ideas and kick start your drafting process, and most of all you aren 't wasting the hundreds of dollars that you paid for the class. I encourage you to do your very best to make it to each class, because I promise it will ease a lot of stress and you will do better academically.

As a freshman in high school, school was my least favorite place to be and I also dislike going to class. My grades were inadequate by the time I was a sophomore. Toward the end of my sophomore year I met Dawn Pollman Kivlehan who is a teacher at Fowler High School. She is the head of the ESL (English as a Second Language) department. Mrs. Kivlehan was born and raised in Syracuse, New York and lived in a neighborhood called Tipperary Hill. She enjoyed in spending time with her family, listening to music and watching Fowler soccer. She had a bad habit of drinking Diet Pepsi every morning. I remember every morning she drinks Pepsi. She played field hockey in college and basketball in her early age. Her eyes changes color depending on the clothes she wears and, then green when she’s upset. Mrs. Dawn is fashionable during the week she always dressed up except Fridays. Friday she wears her soccer t-shirts. (She really loves wearing sweatpants after work). Dawn Pollman Kivlehan is hardworking, helpful, and very beloved teacher. (I can really say that she is one of the hardest working person I know)

In 2010, Grant High School, set out to improve (Lambertson 42-43). This school quickly went from being in the worst 5% of schools in Michigan to the superior 92% (Lambertson 43-45). This school poured effort into its programs to try to bring up test grades (Lambertson 42-45). Amazingly, Grant High School brought its average ACT score up 2.4 points in around three years (Lambertson 45). However, in the end, was this school successful? Were its students prepared to succeed?

In the beginning of 8th grade we were asked to write a letter to ourselves explaining how our year was going so far. You were to write the letter, place it in an envelope and open it on the last day of school. Although it was a mandatory assignment, I enjoyed reading my opinions from the first couple days of school and I thought I would write one again. This week I completed my first week of high school, and I thought I would share my POV so that I could later look back on this and see how a “naive” freshman saw things.

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.

Dear graduates, just between us, tell me: are you done with High School? Are you ready to move on to new endeavors? I thought so. Perhaps some of you were ready months ago, right? Or even some of you thought that you were already ready when I was your soccer coach in Middle School! I promise I won’t tell that to Mr. Johnson or Mrs. Heilman. / However, on the other hand, that is how life works. Our life is full of temporary things. You keep moving on to the thing as the years pass.