My Personal Experience : My Experience In High School

I never truly did have a high school experience, sure I had a dozen or so friends, but my relationships with them lacked depth. We may have seen each other on the weekends and laughed at each other’s jokes, but in the end it was entirely meaningless. We had almost nothing in common besides the fact that we attended the same school. The only reason I had made friends with them in the first place was simply out of necessity, after all, no one wants to be that kid that sits alone at the lunch table. Had we not become friends, each and every one of us would have been that kid.

I, in most respects, am a perfectly normal teenager. On any given day, you can find me laid across my best friend’s bed, homework in tow, munching on junk food and chatting about the latest gossip. If I’m not there, you might be able to find me curled up in bed, binge-watching the latest shows on Netflix. My weekends are filled to the brim with shopping and team spirit, as my friends and I cheer on our football team under those bright Friday night lights. All of this combined presents a vignette of the typical high school girl. However, my high school experience has been anything but typical, as I have spent the last year and a half of my life attending high school on a college campus.

As I gain more experience through learning in situations I find myself in, my mind flashes back to memories I have gained. A native of inner city Charlotte, North Carolina, many of my memories inspire me to continue growing with knowledge, so that I can help those whose decisions have mentally hindered them from growing intellectually. My mother had me at the age of sixteen, so the first knowledge I obtained about the world was learned through her experience as a teenage mother with dark skin in America. My family lineage is rooted in environments of low-income communities. My mother, one out of six, was raised in a household with both parents who were employed. Her mother and father, my grandparents, strived to make ends meet for the family without obtaining a high school diploma. My mother did not receive her high school diploma neither. My grandparents felt it necessary to raise me while my mother enrolled into a housing voucher program and rented her own apartment. I was enrolled into a head start program at the age of four, which helped me prepare for public schooling.

I did great my Freshman year while living in the dorms and loved my chosen path of becoming a teacher. My academics suffered when I moved off campus after Freshman year. During my Sophomore year I had a disagreement with my Education professor on how to teach a class and dropped his course. He did not believe that anyone could properly teach a lesson outside even when the topic was parts of a tree. This decision lead to an even greater downfall in my academics, since now I had zero direction and zero motivation. After changing majors a couple times I dropped out my Senior year. I went back to college as an adult in 2014, again a Mizzou, and did wonderfully.

Each year of school you meet new people and experience new lessons. The school year comes with many hardships and downfalls, but it also comes with some good times. For me personally, freshman year was the not only the toughest year of school to get good grades, it also had some of my most traumatizing life experiences and lessons. Freshman year was not all bad though. For example, I met many new people that I cherish dearly in life and made solid relationships with new friends, teachers, and coaches. Ninth grade is the foundation for the rest of your high school career, so I tried my best to succeed not only inside the classroom, but also outside of the classroom, and I think I achieved my goal.

Throughout my years in preschool, primary and elementary, middle school, and high school, hands-on learning and the relationships I’ve formed with teachers and classmates have made my education effective and fun, forming me into the student and person I am now.

When others see me, they assume that i don't want to talk them because i'm shy but i just don't want to embarrass myself but when you get to know me more i am very energetic and happy person.

One of the most successful experiences I have had in my previous years in school was taking nine science credits in four years. This might not sound like much of an accomplishment, but when you consider that the requirement to graduate from most schools is three it takes on a little more weight. The reason I did this was that I want to be a doctor and that drives me to learn as much about science as I can. My top strength from the Gallop test was empathy, this helped me to get nine science credits in that my empathy partly drives my desire to be a doctor. While taking the science classes taught me a lot that will be helpful in my profession, it also taught me how to study and manage my time wisely.

Almost three years of high school had gone by with nothing but straight As. However, my Junior year ended with a B printed firmly on my report card, yet I was proud nonetheless. I had worked my hardest in that class, harder than I had for any other. I stood by my mark, and if my best was a B, I was satisfied with that result. My pride would have been inconceivable to the Alexander of the years prior, though. I’ve been an obsessive perfectionist as far back as I can remember. I remember checking my elementary school math homework again and again, just to make sure that there were no errors at all. It was easy to be perfect when the work I got was easy and limited, but when middle school came and went and high school began, it was a different story. By the beginning of tenth grade, it was not uncommon for me to stay up several nights in a row, toiling in the office downstairs over a product that was already good but not quite flawless. As the minute hand whirled around the clock and the coffee supply dwindled, I became more tired and depressed over a goal I always fell short of. My teachers said that I did great work through, and that’s what mattered. Perfect work meant perfect grades; perfect grades meant a perfect college; a perfect college meant a perfect job, and a perfect job meant a perfect life. Schoolwork was all I thought about. Even the necessary act of eating was always accompanied with a pencil and paper. When winter break arrived and I had no papers to write, no

n the second grade, after a fun weekend of watching football, I decided to go to my parents if I could start playing football. They decided to get me to play soccer first and see if I enjoyed that, and being the stubborn little kid that I was. So after a year of soccer, my parents asked if I liked it and I told them no. That fall I signed up for the Little Devils, a little league football team. My football career started out great. I was a starter for my first four years at the Little Devils. Quarterback which was my favorite position to play. In my last year as a starter, my team went undefeated and won the championship with me at quarterback. The next season everyone had grown a lot more than I did. I was very short and the head coach decided to not let me start at quarterback and instead moved our running back at quarterback. The next year was my 8th-grade year I started the first game, but I struggled and eventually lost the job. I also broke my left arm ending my little league career.

When I was a freshman starting in Gladstone High School, all I thought my only goal was to actively participate in the classes that I needed to go to college. I was reluctant of high school since I did not know what to expect. I was not the athletic one but I was smart in academics. However, there was one event during the middle of my freshman year that presented a challenge I had to face.

College never really intimidated me. I always got decent enough grades, had friends, and participated in sports during my High School years. Nothing really worthy of a scholarship by any means, and my family was unfortunately not in the financial situation to send me to an out of state school. They always did everything they could for me, So my first choice (in state) was University of Denver. However, as my family lived pretty far in Boulder to be exact, I moved into the dorms on campus. That's one of the worst decisions i’ve ever come to.

The nerve-wracking feeling of school hit me a month into summer. When I saw the email regarding my class schedule for junior year, AP Chemistry and AP Psychology were listed. Anxiety was stirring within me. Although I had a notion of the challenge I am about to face, I chose to give it a shot. Having the same teacher for both classes, I sat in the same spot for two consecutive periods, feeling clueless. I was walking out of the classroom when my teacher pulled me aside for a word, she gave me a pat on the back, “You’re the only person taking both classes this year, Good luck!” I was not entirely sure if it was an encouragement or a warning. “What have I gotten myself into?”, “What am I doing this for?”, Countless number of questions starts to formulate as I made my way back home.

Day one freshman year, my first thought was that I wasn’t going to make it. I had little faith in my ability to move forward in life. I thought, no I knew I wasn’t going to make it through high school for two reasons: I wasn’t smart enough and I wasn’t ready. In truth I was more than smart enough for the task, but I lacked the confidence. I felt I wasn’t ready for several reasons one being maturity another being anxiety. So throughout my freshman year I struggled to stay afloat because I didn’t believe in myself. It wasn’t until the following year that I started to realize that I was more than smart enough for succeed. My first hint was when I was able (with the help of a teacher) to catch up to my entire algebra class in the matter of a month. Note: I prior to that class I never learnt algebra not even a pre-version of it. So the fact that I managed to catch up to everyone else in the class in the matter of a month was amazing. I then went on to surpass the majority of them when it came to understanding why the formulas worked the way they did. Even with that I still doubted my intelligence, but not just my intelligence I doubted myself as a whole. The year went on and due to having little past experience with reading I was placed in a reading class (several reading classes actually). Although I took a reading class freshman year nothing is really noteworthy. But sophomore year was different, I was placed in a reading class with an older lady as the teacher. She was very

My junior year was the third and final year that I was enrolled in the business academy at my high school. Being in the business academy was just a sophisticated way of saying that I was taking an online business course through a local community college. It also meant that I was automatically a part of a career and technical student organization called Business Professionals of America. For the three previous years, I had participated in the Regional BPA Competition, however, I fell short one place of qualifying for the State Competition each year.