I Finally Made It!

Graduation is something many teenagers look forward to as a chance to begin a new chapter of their lives. I looked at it as an escape from hell. In high school I was a different person, an angry person, who struggled so much I was sent to a resource room where I would get extra help on tests and homework. Even with the extra help I still failed a lot of my classes which resulted in me needing to attend summer school after my freshman year. I actually enjoyed attending summer school. The classes were longer, but the teachers were more willing to do one on one help sessions with the students during the class which resulted in me getting better grade than I achieved during regular school. When it was time for summer school to end, I was actually very disappointed. I knew that I’d be going back to my high school in the fall. I struggled again through my sophomore year, and managed to get by with the grades needed to move on. My junior year was a different story. I had missed a lot of school and was failing some important classes. At home we had my grandmother staying with us while she had cancer. Again I needed to attend summer school, but there was just no time for me to drive there with my family needing the car. I chose to be held back a year in school so my mom could use the car as she needed to. My second junior year was mostly a repeat of my freshman year. I was failing classes all over again. I just could not keep up with the rest of the class. Teachers would even skip over me when it was my turn to read a chapter in a book aloud due to how slow I was. By the end of the year I needed to attend summer school again. Once summer school was taken care of I was finally a senior, though a year late. I was excited at first to attend my senior year, but something changed. I don’t know exactly what went through my head, but after about two weeks of school I just stopped going completely. I was going nowhere and just sitting at home doing nothing for a couple months. My family, and some friends helped me get on the right track and I enrolled in night school to finish and get my diploma. Night school was far from what I expected. I thought it would be something more like summer school that I would enjoy. I did not enjoy a single moment of night school and began to realize what a huge mistake I made by leaving my old school, and at that point in time it was too late to fix it so I had to keep going to reach my new goal of graduating. The work and effort I had to put into reaching graduation was difficult, but even though I may not have realized it at the time it was gratifying. I was able to say “I did that!” Now that I look back, I would definitely have to say that graduating was the most important thing to happen to me in school. It opened up new doorways for me to try new things. I did something that some of my family was unable to do. I value what I did to get there now, even though I didn’t back then, I would probably a different person today if I didn’t graduate, and definitely not be going to college.