The feeling of accomplishment I had for myself that day was indescribable. I never thought that I would be walking across the stage graduating high school. It was a huge accomplishment for me. It was a great feeling knowing that my parents and other family members were proud of me for being able to walk across that stage and accept that little rolled up piece of paper that says that I did it. Graduating high school was a very proud moment for me. It showed me that no matter what happens in your life, if your put your mind to something then you can accomplish whatever it is you want to.
One reason that this accomplishment was so huge for me was because of the rough road I took to accomplishing it. At a young age I got involved with the wrong crowd, as many teenagers do. I got into drinking and drugs early. Doing these drugs made me make some bad decisions, especially when it came to my education. I did very well my first year of high school. During that year, I really started to hang out with the wrong crowd of people. By the end of the year I was really starting to not care about school. I was more into hanging out with my friends and doing drugs. A month into my sophomore year I dropped out of high school. I had ran away from home and got involved with the juvenile justice system. For a couple months, I was in and out of juvenile hall every couple of weeks. I spent a couple holidays and a birthday in juvenile hall.
While in juvenile hall we had to attend school. Here I was introduced to a new way of school. The school worked in a different way than the traditional high school. For every hour of classwork done, the students would receive one credit towards that subject. Say I did an hour of science classwork. I would then get one credit towards the science requirement for graduating. I really seemed to do well with this form of achieving credits towards graduation. After leaving juvenile hall, I searched for another high school that had the same system for achieving high school credits.
I was able to find a school that was called a necessary small high school. It worked in the same way that the juvenile hall school did. I did very well at this school for the first couple of months, but unfortunately old habits got a hold of me again. There were other students in the school that used drugs, and eventually I started going out during our lunch time and breaks to use drugs with them. This really started to put a dent in my ability to focus on my schoolwork once again. Eventually I got so into the drugs and so lazy that I dropped out of the school.
At the very young age of 16 I found out that I was pregnant with my first daughter, who is now 6. Finding this out scared me a whole lot, but it also got me thinking. I needed to change my life. I could not bring a child into the world doing the things that I was doing. Three months after I found out that I was pregnant I was placed into a recovery group home that was specifically for pregnant teenagers. This program was able to get me to stop using drugs.
After arriving at the group home, I got enrolled into their charter school. I found out that they worked the same way that the juvenile hall school and necessary small high school worked, but with its own little twist to it. At this school, every chapter in the textbook that you completed counted as one credit towards graduation requirements. I really liked that idea. I had about 6 months before my daughter was due to be born. I decided that I wanted to graduate high school before she was born. I knew that it was going to be a lot of work because I knew that I had a lot of credits that needed to be completed in order to graduate that June, which was only three months away.
I buckled down and worked as hard as I could. There were nights that I stayed up until midnight or later getting as many chapters done in that time as I could. I managed to complete my whole junior year, senior year, and half of my sophomore year credits in a total of three months. Sometimes I wonder if I would have ever graduated from high school if I had stayed in a traditional high school. I liked being able to control when I could finish my high school credits.
I have found myself during my venture through the junior college looking back at that picture of me at my high school graduation. Playing my graduation in my head makes me focus on completing my college degree. Any time that I feel like I cannot complete my degree, I just look back at that picture. Sometimes I have to tell myself that if I can graduate high school after everything that happened during my teenage years and knowing that I was soon to become a single teenage parent, then I can complete my college degree. Even though I have more children now, I am no longer a single parent.
The main thing that I have learned through the experiences in my life is that you can accomplish anything that you want. The only thing that a person has to remember is that they need to stay positive and tell themselves that they can accomplish what they want. I have overcome many obstacles in my life and still have a few more to overcome to accomplish my goal of obtaining a college degree. I just need to remember that I can get my degree. Graduating high school despite what was going on in my life during that time has really motivated me to obtain my college degree.
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