The GRC Way
“Zhamerah Newton,” the announcer said as I walked across the stage. I can hear clapping and screams of joy as I grabbed my diploma. As, I look out into the crowd there’s a sea of my friends in their blue gowns, yelling and screaming my name. It’s over. I finally made it; I got through it. As my classmates and I stand to leave, our principle says one last goodbye, as we watch a sky of blue caps rise in the air and fall back down into our hands. I can hear the famous graduation music as I leave the Convention Center in Virginia Beach to take pictures with family and friends. As of this day, a new beginning is ahead of me, and I’m ready for it.
Everybody has plans to go to college, but before going, we all need to graduate high school. Green Run Collegiate (GRC) was the most challenging part of my high school career. There was a lot of trials and tribulations while attending GRC. For example, making bad grades, failing tests and quizzes, and getting in trouble. There were also some pros about attending GRC, like making new friends and joining sports teams.
During my ninth grade year, we had mentor meetings with our academic advisors to talk about grades, our social life, and how school is going. Although it was my first year in high school, I had high expectations of myself because of how well I did in middle school. Usually as a freshman in high school, the history you are supposed to take is World Geography, but in GRC, the history that is taken is Government, which is a twelfth grade course. At first, it was a struggle trying to grasp the information taught by a tough teacher, but over the course of the year, it slowly got a little better, by maintaining a C average. During my ninth and tenth grade year, I was becoming very frustrated because I had not yet once made honor roll. As those two years went on, I gave up and started not to care anymore.
In eleventh grade, I was going down the same route I went in my ninth and tenth grade year, which was doing and turning in work, such as essays and projects, late, and procrastinating all of the time. After feeling defeated and overwhelmed for three years, I decided that it was time for a change. After failing my classes for the last three years I got tired of seeing bad grades and wanted a change to better myself. I told myself that I would do better in my classes, I would pay attention, ask and answer questions, study, take better notes, and stop procrastinating. I started to earn better grades, feeling accomplished with myself and the work that I have done. As a result of earning better grades, the school provided Chick-Fil-A for honor roll breakfast. Eating the breakfast made me realize that anything is possible as long as I worked extremely hard to earn what I wanted.
Eleventh grade was the start of International Baccalaureate (IB) courses which means harder classes and more work, and one IB course I took was IB Math Studies. IB Math Studies includes correlation coefficient, geometry, linear equations, polynomials, and so much more. I was always a fan of math; it came easy to me rather than other subjects, that was until I came face to face with IB Math Studies. As I was taking the class, I thought it was going to be a breeze, but I was gladly mistaken. The first test I took was terrible, I failed it. After the first test, there were more test, and quizzes that I also failed extremely bad. For the first quarter, I got a E as my final grade. After I saw the grade on my report card, I felt disappointed in myself. I felt defeated, I felt like colleges and universities weren’t going to look at me anymore because of that one E. I did not want to continue taking the class because I knew that I was not going to do good. Eventually, I stopped caring and gave up because I kept failing test and quizzes. As I had mentioned before, I wanted a change. I wanted to change how I approached IB Math Studies. In class, I started to pay attention, take better notes by annotating, asking at least one question a day, going to tutoring, and actually studying. My math notebook was filled with a plethora of new information that I had learned. My hand would start to cramp up because of all of the notes I would have to take in a day. I would even have pencil and pen smudges on the side of my hand. It was an excruciating time because of the new changes. After my new attitude towards math, my test and quiz scores started to improve from E’s to C’s and then to B’s. I was extremely proud of myself because I knew that I could do it, even with a little push.
Green Run Collegiate was one of the most challenging experiences for me. From failing classes to passing them, I persevered through the most grueling time in high school. From taking MYP classes to IB classes, it helped me grow in an extremely large way. Growth was embedded in me, I took actions towards achieving the grades that I wanted. On graduation day as I grabbed my diploma, I could feel all of the hard work and dedication that I went through. “It takes dedication and hard work to constantly improve yourself,” unknown.
Memoir Reflection: As I look back and read my memoir I realize that it wasn’t one of my best works. I can honestly say that I most likely didn’t take my time writing the paper, most likely in front of the tv, while playing with my phone. I realize that my memoir could have been a lot more powerful if I didn’t procrastinate. There are multiple changes that I can do to my paper now, that I have re-read it. For example, I could add way more descriptive words than what I have now. My expressions were descriptive, but I know that if I would have added more, it would have gave a better picture to the reader, and it would have increased the quality of my paragraphs. Another way that I could improve my memoir is by going back and recognizing all of the comma errors that I had made. While I re-read my paper, it felt like I didn’t have any passion writing it, it felt as though I wrote it because I had to. Now I recognize that my memoir could be way better if I would have literally took the time to do what I was supposed to do without having to rush. If I had the chance to rewrite the memoir, I would start from the beginning, by using my comma errors notes, researching descriptive words to use, and literally take my time to write the paper.