Fictitious Expections

4 years ago I decided to attend Westinghouse College Prep following behind my sister. I was told that Westinghouse was an extremely hard high school to get into but because of my work ethic and good grades, that I had gotten in. I than learned that high school and middle school were completely different. In middle school everything was easy, and I felt as if I wasn’t challenged enough. The transition from middle school to high school was so difficult because in middle school I was never distracted and my mom kept close ties to the school. Everything in high school changed, for one my mom didn’t have any ties to Westinghouse. It didn’t help that I went into Westinghouse thinking, “I’m smart, I don't need to work as hard as everyone else here.” I quickly found out that wasn't the case at Westinghouse. 

Freshman year I had the lowest GPA of my life. I had failed many classes and struggled the entire year. After freshman, summer 2012, I wanted to take a break so, I didn't attend summer school. Also, back then I always thought, “I got time”, I didn't take any online classes. The following school year I did better, I didn't fail any classes, but my GPA was still a bit low. I noticed that I was just doing enough to just flow by, which didn’t bother me. Looking back, just “floating” by should've bothered me and I would've been more successful. Because I started to expect less from myself, I provided less and therefore succeeded less. Junior year I forgot about all of my missed credits and started to take school for granted. Also, I had an attractive girlfriend and a lot of friends, because of this I started to care less about school. Also, my first three years made me pay my final year of high school. Senior year was the year I took my first AP class and a bunch of other honors classes. My second semester I took 9 regular classes, Monday through Friday (7:45 am- 5pm), one Saturday class, and two online classes. So, I was doing double the workload of other students each day. During this overhaul of work, I thought that it was possible to make up the missing credits and graduate on time. Come June 11, 2016, graduation day, I fell ½ credit short. My counselor and vice principal wanted to claim that i've done more than any other student this last semester. Which was true, but I couldn't feel any pride, because while my counselor said I was one of the “brightest students that Westinghouse has had in a long time”, my peers were graduating and I wasn’t. Because I was going off to college that winter, I took that as a life lesson, “time waits on no one.” The summer after graduation, Summer 2016, I tried to attend summer school but couldn't because of family issues. So once again time wasn’t waiting on me. Fall came by and college was 4 months away and I was still missing my last ½ credit. My dad kept pressuring me to get my last credit and to go to college, So, I decided to attend Austin Community to finish my high school education. I think that this was the right choice to finish high school, receive my diploma and move on to college for second semester. Looking back I think that this was a huge hole I put myself into freshman year, and I am now trying to fill the hole completely which took time but i’m finally almost done and ready to move on.