As a young girl, I wanted to be an astronaut. I also wanted to be a scientist and do experiments in a lab. I got those ideas from watching TV. Back then my family’s financial situation was challenging. Given our limited resources, television was my window to the world. One of my regular activities was watching the space shuttles launches with my grandmother. My grandmother was the one who planted in me the idea of higher education before I even started school, partly because it was her own personal dream. Furthermore, she was the most supportive person throughout my career. She was passionate about learning and passed this on to me. While in elementary school, I signed up for as many extracurricular activities as I could. But even so, I wanted …show more content…
However, my family’s daily schedule was already complicated enough. Without anything to feed my interests, my attitudes toward school changed. By the time I reached the 10th grade, I had lost my aspirations. I was still excelling in math and science mostly because it would come out naturally. For my junior year, I went to a new school. Because of my A in geometry, the school principal enrolled me in advanced math. I did not know what this meant until I showed up to class the next day. I was lost and felt like a complete outsider. What is more, my classmates seemed to know everything while I had no clue of what was going on. As a result, and for the first time in my life, I got an F on a test. At the beginning this appeared to be a curse. Yet, it turned out to be the key to my future. The teacher’s encouragement incentivized me to work harder and consequently my grades began …show more content…
I relocated and became a substitute teacher while I thought things through. During this time, I worked mostly with children from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Soon I realized that there was a lot in common between these children and me. Aware of the setbacks and the opportunities I had during my school years and later my engineering career, I thought I could make a difference if I became a teacher for at least a few years. Little had changed since I was a young girl. The chances for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds with inclinations towards STEM to develop their abilities are limited and these chances decrease even more when students are English language
One extracurricular activity that I am very passionate about would be the FFA. FFA has taught me so many things and it has brought me so many places. I 've learned how to be a great speaker from different events my advisor has challenged me to do. Public speaking has taken me so many places and I have attributed most of my success to FFA. When I was a freshmen I competed and received gold in the creed speaking competition. As a sophomore, I tried extemporaneous speaking and received a gold for that as well. As a junior I really wanted to challenge myself so I took up agricultural sales as my winter career development experience. I ended up being recognized as the state runner up individual agriculture salesman as well as the 15th best agricultural sales man in the nation. Now as a senior, I have been going around speaking at different school board meetings, advocating
Through his eyes, he has experienced two very different worlds which are to be much alike in expectations and attitudes. However, this being not the case, it leads me to question how much the psychological and social effects of being in a remedial class weight on the minds of the adolescent. It is interesting to me that the expectations were so vastly different in a world where we teach our young minds that anyone can achieve with enough effort. Effort itself, was not pressed in the lower classes (or at least not expected, let alone strived for), and thus, students suffered from the psychological effects of being placed in a class in which they felt intellectually inferior to those who were in a higher stratum of
Growing up, my parents never expected perfection but expected that I try to accomplish my best. The effort I’ve put forth in learning has been reflected in my grades throughout my high school career. I’ve entered myself in vigorous course work such as AP Government and AP English to become well prepared for my college career, all while maintaining a 4.4 grade point average this year. Not only do I engage in AP classes, but up until this year I had no study halls. I wanted my day to be packed full of interesting classes that I would enjoy learning about. My grades and choice of classes prove the effort that I put forth in my learning. Working hard now can only pay off in the future. Learning now creates a well-rounded human being. Working to learn is why I am so dedicated to my studies now.
I was raised in an encouraging household where both of my parents greatly valued education. Although they were high school graduates, neither could afford to attend college; a combination of family and financial woes ultimately halted their path. As a result, my parents frequently reminded me that getting a good education meant better opportunities for my future. To my parents, that seemed to be the overarching goal: a better life for me than the one they had. My parents wanted me to excel and supported me financially and emotionally of which the former was something their parents were not able to provide. Their desire to facilitate a change in my destiny is one of many essential events that contributed to my world view.
“School can be a tremendously disorienting place… You’ll also be thrown in with all kind of kids from all kind of backgrounds, and that can be unsettling… You’ll see a handful of students far excel you in courses that sound exotic and that are only in the curriculum of the elite: French, physics, trigonometry. And all this is happening while you’re trying to shape an identity; your body is changing, and your emotions are running wild.” (Rose 28)
As many people have told me before, it is a very different ballgame than middle school’s easy going years. There is much more work, the classes are harder, and the environment is completely different. Many people’s grades may slip and they may cower in fear at the barrage of assignments they receive class after class. Unlike other people, I am confident in my ability to excel at all classes and to sustain exemplary grades. Therefore, while many are trembling in fear at the prodigious assignments and work is bombarding them from all angles, I will be at ease, knowing that whatever obstacle is thrown my way, I will conquer it and be its own
Within the past four years of my high school as “ Willis Bilagody”, have been been such a rollercoaster ride. There were the funny/fun times when the people there made it seem that way, and bumpy times; by that I mean the work and the grades. The struggles of becoming the active and successful person I am to society was because Freshman year of high school, it was always just trying to fit in. Always getting the preaches of being the hard working adult that we had to be, and that nothing is always going to be there handed down. Then came along the money. There had to be a way to have cash to spend, and oh wait, working. Working and doing yard work for people of the neighborhood was first step on becoming self-reliant. But although, I was recognized as having Insomnia, attention-deficit disorder (A.D.D.), and synthesia that didn’t stop me from going to school, or dropping out and being a loser. I just had to keep trucking, that’s when hiking/backpacking came along for me. To me hiking was my escape, “I’d always known, in the abstract, that climbing mountains was a dangerous pursuit.” (Krakauer 450). How things were applied for school sometimes.
The only person in my family that went to college after high school was my grandmother. I do not want to be just another family member to not go to college; I do not want to give up my dreams, because I do not have the education for them. I want to be able to say I did it for me, for my dreams. In the paragraph above I explained a little about my life when I was little and what that taught me was that life doesn 't always go as you might want it to; with that in mind college would be my choice, it would be what I want. The reasons I want to go to college may not seem significant enough to you, but too me they mean so much more than what you will understand. There is this quote, I do not know who said it, but I think it means a lot; “ You were born to be real, not to be Perfect”, this quote works perfectly with what I am trying to tell you. I believe that everyone should live by that quote. I am not going to tell you what I think you want to hear, but what I believe you need to
It was the fourth year of my school carrier. In other words, the year of truth if I would make the cut to the higher education track. I was nervous because I knew that I would be capable of going this route, but I the feeling of concern was stronger because I haven’t had performed very well in my fourth year so far. At the end of the school year, I received the shocking news that I didn’t make the cut to go to the school which would have had allowed me to go to University later on in my life. I was sad, disappoint in myself, and lost self-esteem in my educational abilities. At this time, I was more embarrassed then able to realize the real benefit of a system which early on tracks children’s
My story began on a cool summer’s night twenty short years ago. From my earliest memory, I recall my father’s disdain for pursuing education. “Quit school and get a job” was his motto. My mother, in contrast, valued education, but she would never put pressure on anyone: a sixty-five was passing, and there was no motivation to do better. As a child, my uncle was my major role-model. He was a living example of how one could strive for greatness with a proper education and hard work. At this tender age of seven, I knew little about how I would achieve my goals, but I knew that education and hard work were going to be valuable. However, all of my youthful fantasies for broader horizons vanished like smoke when school began.
I arrived at Sacred Heart Cathedral for my first day of high school. As my friend’s mom drove through the populous streets of San Francisco, I sat in the back seat of her car running through the pages of the planner I had received at orientation. As the thick, smooth pages ran through my fingers, I worried over finding my classes, being on time to my classes, and having time to out my books in my locker. I found the page dated August 24th, my first day of high school. I had all six classes that day, French, English, Honors Algebra, Physics, World History, and lastly Scripture.
The first semester of high school goes with me really well, I see that high school isn’t hard like I usually think back when I was in middle school. At the beginning of the school year, I used to think that it’s hard to gets an A in high school classes, but now I see that getting an A in high school classes isn’t hard unless you put in your effort and use my mind to think about problems, and questions. When I was in middle school, I have a B for Algebra 1, and I thought that by getting into Geometry, which is a class that is above Algebra so it’s much be hard, and that I will not probably gets an A. After the first semester is almost over, I see that I have survived Geometry and that I still have an A- in Geometry, showing me that it’s either that I’m good at shapes, or it’s just luck.
My grades in elementary school were poor because I had trouble paying attention to things that were not challenging. I tried to play sick just about every day but my parent were not falling for it. My favorite classes were gym, music, and art. Competing in sports is where I spent most of my time. The words of my parents and teachers went in one ear and out the other. “School just wasn’t interesting to me”
From a child, each person has a select taste for what they like and dislike. Their experiences and knowledge give them insight to what is good and bad. Each day, one kid might want to be an artist, a fireman, or a construction worker based on what they see. A large part of what children see is determined by parents. Parents are the number one successor and detriment to a child’s future. Many parents read kids books and show them pictures, but they lack in showing science and math in the real world. Teachers are part of the lack of STEM problem, as well as parents. Elementary teachers are the primary skills teachers. They teach how to read, write, and do math. It requires a vast field of knowledge, yet it does not go beyond the surface of each topic. Most elementary teachers are not comfortable teaching science and math past what curriculum tells them to teach. There are many problems surrounding schools systems, but the lack of STEM is an alarming
Summer break was over, and it was the time to go back to school to my eleventh grade. School for me wasn’t that different as my summer break. I never felt like not going to school after a long summer break because I used to have a lot of fun in school. School for me was a place where you would socialize, gossip, brag, drive attention, miss conduct, daydream, text students, sing, ask silly questions and flirt with girls. I think now you know how my days at school used to be. However, a day has come that I would not expect it to come at all. I suddenly became a much disciplined student that I would not do anything out of the way. It all happened when I meet my new physics professor Jamal Betar who has wonderful qualities that amaze him from other teachers, and he also gave me the true meaning of education that I have never thought of before in my life.