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Personal growth from college
The effects of a college education
The effects of a college education
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“I never thought I would attend college after skipping so many classes in high school; an event happened that made me determined to go to college.” Nancy Cai, my cousin, stared up at the high building when it hit her that she had finally met her goal in life. Struggling to get through high school, she did not even consider college as her next step in life. Nancy was hopeless, tired, and wanting to drop-out of high school. She was always skipping classes and missing school. Day by day, it became a normal routine. Until one day, when she was going to skip class to go to Central Park, her teacher caught her skipping school.
That was just Nancy’s life until her teacher caught her. They decided walk to Central Park and have a talk. As the chilly
air blew around her, Nancy nervously walked with her teacher by her side. Nancy’s teacher, Mrs. Comb, told her that she knew that Nancy has been skipping her classes. However, Mrs. Comb made her a deal that she will not call her parents and tell them that she is skipping school if she will not skip classes again and try succeeding in her classes. From that day on, Nancy decided that she would try her hardest in her classes. “I made that deal with Mrs. Comb. Since that day, I worked hard to do my best in every class and in the end, it paid off,” says Cai, with a huge grin on her face. Now looking back, Nancy is so grateful that she decided to follow through with her deal. With her rough childhood as a daughter of an immigrant, it never occurred to her that she would ever graduate high school, much less, attend college. Growing up in the the noisy, crowded borough of Queens, New York, Nancy did not have a easy life. She had no interest in school, whatsoever. After the deal that she made with her teacher, she had hope that maybe she would somehow succeed in life. Nancy became determined that she would graduate high school and attend college. Nancy started joining more clubs and getting more involved in school. “Everyday, I felt like I needed to do something good in the world and make the most of life.”
Pashtana said she would rather die than not go to school and acted on her words. Her education is limited and she doesn’t have all the recourses to make school easier, yet she still loves and wants all the knowledge she can get. While I sit in my three story private school, a clean uniform free of holes or loose seams, my macbook air in my lap, the smell of cookies rising up from the cafeteria, wishing to be anywhere else but there. No one has beat me because I want to go to school, no one has forced me into a marriage, I’ve never put my life in jeopardy for the sake of education. Pashtana’s life and choices made me take a moment to stop and reflect on my own life and how fortunate I am to have what I have.
Too often, students are taught that their lives are defined by who they are and what they do, not by circumstances. But circumstances can be very crucial to determining how a person’s life is shaped. It’s no secret that not all schools and neighborhoods are created equal. Some schools offer advanced classes, and college prep, and opportunities, while some schools don’t even have textbooks. Even within the circumstances, there are circumstances. The students in the latter school that lacks textbooks may have parents who go the extra mile to ensure that they have more opportunities, or could have parents who don’t have the resources to do that. Environment and circumstance can make a huge difference, and Wes Moore’s The Other Wes Moore is a fantastic
Raquel and Melanie are two poverty stricken students that attended University Height’s High School in the South Bronx, because their school was not federal funded, it lacked resources; so it does not come as a surprise, perspective students like Melanie and Raquel have more of a ...
Every fall millions of American adolescents gear up to apply for the thousands of colleges and universities across the nation. For many students this process is a simple-natural progression through a linear educational track in which no extra preparation, beyond a paper application, is required. However, for many students college preparation can begin as early as conception. Alexandria Robbins follows the stories of nine students from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland. Whitman is known for and could be summarized by a simple term in which Robbins’ book is also titled: Overachievers. The author explores the hectic nature of helicopter parenting, bureaucratic admission processes, the culture of Ivy (a term describing the upper echelon of academic institutions), unrelenting and unrealistic expectations, and the cyclonic degradation of innocent and carefree adolescent development.
The average of ninth grade students read at a fourth or fifth level grade or below and two thirds of the ninth grade students drop out by twelfth grade. With that being said, the students were taking pointless courses that were affecting their academic performances, such classes were Sewing Class, Life Skills, or “retarded class” as they were defined by Mireya’s own words. According to Mireya her classmates have aspirations for a profession such as a being social worker or a doctor, in Mireya’s case she plans to go to
Mike Rose met many struggling students at UCLA’s Tutorial Center, the Writing Research Project, and the school’s Summer program. He first describes the loneliness students feel upon arriving at college, and that as they try to find themselves, they all to often lose themselves because they are bombarded with ideas that are so foreign to them. He introduces his audiences to Andrea, a bright young girl out of high school who, despite hours of memorizing in her textbook, could not obtain a passing grade on her Chemistry mid-term. How is this possible if she spent so much time studding? Rose explains that she failed because in college, and in this course in particular, it is not enough for a student to know the material, but rather, to be able to apply it in a various amount of problems. Yet the problem Andrea faces is that she was never taught this in high school.
Every single individual has once heard the words “get good grades, go to a good college and graduate, in order to get a good job and succeed in life.” However, no one can really assure that a student with a degree is going to have a better future than those who do not attend college. Lawrence B. Schlack, a retired superintendent, asserts in his article “Not Going to College is a Viable Option” that college is not the only place to go after graduating from high school. By using different kinds of persuasive techniques the author effectively supports his claim and makes the article an understandable and important tool for both parents and students who believe that college is their mandatory option after high school.
If I can think of any word to say right now it would be the word Frustrated, Frustrated because of the war that is going on and how it is just so frustrating. It was the winter of 1777 and hundreds of thousands of soldiers, including me, were told by George Washington to stay the winter at Valley Forge, a winter camp 18 miles northwest of Philadelphia. My 9-month enlistment is a month away, it ends on March 1st and I know that Washington wants us all to stay to fight the war, but I am concerned for my mother that is growing old and I want to go home. There are many reasons why I have decided not to re-enlist but here are a few the conditions were so terrible, I cannot take them any longer, there were too many supplies
Study Hall was Mark’s first negative impression of Cushing Academy. He thought this was done in order to keep the students in silence and restrain them from having freedom. After he experienced Study Hall at Cushing for over two months, he could really see the changes and results it produced on him. He realized that he didn’t have to worry about having enough time for his studies. Also, he could see his grades improve every week. One day Mark received a phone call from his mother. Before picking up the phone, the only thought he had in his mind was that he was going to get grounded for his grades or performance at school. He answered the phone and there was his proud mother congratulating him for his wonderful grades he ...
Society puts too much pressure on high school students to attend a 4-year college right after graduation. Though this is an attainable goal for some, a great majority of students are not fully prepared for the demands of college. 4-year schools require an incredible amount of maturity and preparation, leaving very little room for mistakes. Schools often overlook this aspect because their main goal is to get as many students into 4-year college as possible. This is a great goal to have however they send students off to college who aren’t ready to be handle the difficult of their courses while being away from home. My senior year of high school, my family and I came to the conclusion that we were not going to be able to afford four-year college tuition. This upset me at first because I felt like all my hard work and good grades went to waste. I dreaded the thought of going to community college because my who...
The term ‘college’ is very hard to define. One can define it as a Utopia of knowledge, where learning is appreciated and it will become useful throughout one’s entire life. Some may also tell that living in a harsh world, ‘college’ is just a place where students enter with an exorbitant amount of money learning things that will not be applied in real life. Consider a hypothetical character John who exemplifies the majority of new students in United States: he feels enthralled and excited to start college, hoping to get a degree at the end of the day. However, John quickly came to a realization that he is not performing at the first few weeks of class. Disillusioned with his bad grades, he simply quit college – and never went back. A fraction of college students also share the same experience as John, with only 30 percent of the entering students actually graduated from a two-year public college (Raley 4). The college dropouts have elevated concern among the government. Despite choosing a cheap alternative, many students still stumble upon studying at community college
One day, Nancy saw her parents crying and she had never seen them cry before. They dropped Linh and her off at one of their friend’s houses. Nancy got mad because she thought they were going shopping and didn’t take her with them. Now, she realizes that they went to make funeral arrangements for her grandmother.
In high school, Shae was just like every student. She played sports, participated in FFA, Student Council and other school activities. She loved high school. Shae had many friends and thought of herself as “popular.” As high school started to come to an end, she was worried about graduating. She was scared that everything would change in her life. When graduation day arrived, she was so excited but again, she was scared. As she walked across the stage to receive her diploma, her anxiety started to disappear. She was no longer only worried about everything changing in her life, she was worried about college too. Shae’s family has always dreamed of her going to college because her parents never went. They wanted her to go so bad that she felt
Nuisance activations happen when your motion sensing light detects blowing tree limbs, a vehicle driving by, etc. which will trip the light when you don't want it to. These are not only providing you with false alarms so-to-speak, but they can also be annoying to your neighbors.
The transition from high school to college is one of the most impactful experiences to take place in an individual’s life. From high school, a place of rules and regulations, to college, a place of independence and self-awareness, there is a noticeable difference in the atmosphere. In other words, college sets a tone of liberation for the student, not to say that there are no more rules or regulations anymore. A student’s success in college is determined by how much he or she puts into the experience as a whole. This type of success involves a number of skills such as time-management, setting goals, and prioritizing, to name a few. Along with these observations, the transition from high school to college is seen as a transition from childhood to adulthood, literally. As an adult, the real world setting starts to make it’s way into the college atmosphere, where the student is on his or her own and is responsible for his or her own actions. This is, by far, the most beneficial aspect of transitioning from high school to college, the real world experience.