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Usernamevioleta_evans
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I am a full time high school student doing the IB Program at my school. It has been really difficult, but overall I feel like it has helped me to grow as a person. High school has been such a good time for me, even though it was difficult and sometimes it was difficult, I feel like I did a lot of growing up in high school. It was the first time I had ever been outside of a sheltered environment after being in a private Christian school for 9 years (kindergarten through eighth grade). My high school was so many times larger than my entire school of 200 students across all of the grades.
The school I went to before my high school was great, but it was so small and sheltered, everyone knew each other. I had the same three teachers for all of middle school and knew everyone in my grade's name because the whole grade consisted of 25 students. Transitioning into my school of over 2000 students for high school was a shock. I had to learn how to make friends for what felt like the first time in my life. I had been with the same people for a majority of my life where we almost all felt stuck with each other. It was like a small, close-knit family. My large classes of over 30 students felt huge and I was even assigned a number because no one could bother to learn my name. It was one of the first times I had ever experienced someone butchering my name, mean teachers, mean substitute teachers etc.
I had no friends starting in high school. I was adopted into my friend group by accident. I was invited to sit with them one day and the rest is history. Now I have great friendships and have been able to find myself a little bit. I have broken out of my shy shell and have become a bit more self assured. I am still anxious is large social settings sometimes, but I'm getting stronger.
Long story short, high school has been a transformative experience. I don't think it has been "the best years of my life", but they have been extremely important and happy (at times) for me. Other than high school, I have been studying music for my whole life. I started playing piano when I was four years old. I play in my church's contemporary service with my Dad and I play the keyboard. I have developed my skills with a piano teacher as well.
Playing in church has helped me to learn to think on the fly and develop my playing Live skills. Piano has consumed my outside life. I have also participated in many musicals as part of the pit orchestra/band. I did my first musical in the fall of my junior year with Loserville, a rock inspired musical. It was such a great experience and I highly recommend getting involved in your own drama program if you can. Following that, I must have caught the drama bug because I agreed to play in the summer with my community theater's production of The Sister Act. This musical was so much harder than the first, but was a great experience. I was able to learn how to be more flexible, play in a larger group, and make social connections with people in my community. Who knew my community was so talented?! I didn't! I mean, yes I did, but also I had no idea I could be in the presence of prospective Broadway actors who also happened to work a part time job down the street.
Following the Sister Act I did Chicago with my school. I played a smaller role in the pit, but I found so many new friends in the pit and saw how talented everyone was. I was so proud to be part of my high school and had a blast.
Music has played an important role in my life and I am so grateful to be able to be a musician.
All in all, I work hard. I think the same could be said about every teenager my age, which is incredibly impressive. I'm so proud of what everyone has been able to accomplish this far. I have met many brilliant people and it's wonderful. I wouldn't say I'm a particularly interesting or brilliant person, but I do work hard. I think my perseverance helps me to stand out in a crowd, not to mention my curly hair and loud laughter, but that's beside the point.
Stressed
Feb 28, 2018 6 years agoBeing a student is not easy. I found this out the hard way, starting in elementary school when I started getting deadlines and had to start taking notes. As I got older, the academics became more and more difficult. I had to quickly learn what a thesis was and how to write one because my first big essay for a grade was right around the corner. I learned that teachers could be ruthless, but also infinitely more merciful than they had been made out to be in middle school. I began the route to becoming an IB student in freshman year. I was told to take physics and ICAP English, Spanish 2, and all sorts of other classes. I was told this would put me on track to be in the IB program when I was a junior and senior. I had been raised under the pretense that harder was more impressive and important for some far away deadline of college applications, but at the time I thought it would be important for me. I pushed myself and beat myself over the head with bad grades. The bad grades came - well in my eyes they were bad - and I had no way of telling myself that I was doing my best and still doing a good job because of my current situation. Starting high school was a shock because I had never been in such a big school before. If we look ahead into my junior year, suddenly the IB Program was here, with the European spellings and confusing paragraph structures. The IB Program was throwing new acronyms, new assignments, and new teachers in my direction. I was juggling new classes and insanely low amounts of sleep. I began to wonder if it was worth it. I still wonder sometimes if it's worth it, but then I see how much I'm learning and how much I love all my teachers. When I walk into some of my favorite classes I am able to see that I am in a room of scholars and we are led by a teacher who loves their job and loves teaching students like us. The skills I've developed on the road to the IB Program have prepared me well for it, but I am still stressed a lot of the time. New stressors come into play. My friends are concerned about college, about boyfriends or girlfriends, and grades. We are all scrambling to understand this messy chapter of life we are in. I know that we all want to help each other, but it's almost impossible to help someone else when you can't help yourself. I know I have struggled with managing my grades and keeping my chin up. It's not easy to balance both school and social life. Some nights I don't get more than six hours of sleep and other nights I jolt awake at midnight wondering if I submitted a big paper, only to realize that I did. School is not easy and I don't think it ever will, but it is what I love doing. At the end of the day, I love to learn and I love being in a room with other people like me - people who want to learn. I want to continue devouring books I don't always understand with literary features and techniques I had never even realized were possible. I want to continue talking with people who understand more than I do, I love being with other people and learning together. It is such a valuable experience and I know that I want to continue on this path. Despite the stress I feel a lot of the time, I am hopeful. I am optimistic that I will be able to work through the stress, find the cause, and fix it. I will be able to make it through the difficulties presented by school even though some days I am so stressed I want to curl up and hide. In conclusion, I am stressed, but that is okay. It's not ideal to be stressed and I do not want to glorify it, but I know that if I weren't stressed I probably wouldn't care about what I do. Stress is not healthy and to be this worried is not healthy either, but I think that despite it all, some stress is good. Being concerned for your work makes you work harder, pushes you to get up in the morning, and helps you feel the rush of relief and adrenaline when you do well and see your hard work pay off. Learning in a community has helped me to realized how important it is to care for what you do. So many times within a group I work in, I see that students are lost and need help from others and every time it is refreshing to see how eager other students are to help each other. We understand each other and despite the difficulties and severity of the stress, it builds a community that I think helps with the stress.
