My highschool years started off as any ninth graders high school days would. Not knowing where to go, having to adapt to a new, bigger place. Not knowing a lot of people like I did last year. Also, it didn’t help that we were the youngest in the school. Ninth grade year was the year that I really discovered who I would probably be friends with for the rest of the time I'm in high school with.  I thought I would be getting bullied for being a freshman but that didn’t really happen. Most upper class men are pretty cool and a lot of them I'm friends with now. Most of them were helpful and when I needed them.

Towards the middle of the year I had made a lot of friends and I was happy with this school and at this time I just wanted to have fun and I didn’t really care much about whether I was doing my work or not. I just wanted to have fun and hang out with my friends, so that’s what I did, which I realize now wasn’t a good choice. I’d say freshman year was the year that I had the most friends and I was pretty popular. 

Not doing my work freshman year really set me back where I am now. If I would have tried and had a higher GPA I would have had more opportunities and more career options now, But when I was younger that didn’t matter to me, if I do good now I could have a possibility of going into a career that I like. Around the end of the year freshman year all of my friends were telling me about this sport that I've never heard of before called “lacrosse” it was the day that they were having a meeting where you meet the coaches and they explain the program. So I went and met the coaches and decided that I wanted to play. Since it was my first year playing lacrosse or any sport, I didn’t play much but I got the experience on varsity. After the season I noticed that I lost a good amount of weight, around 20 - 30 pounds after lacrosse season and I started to like the way I looked. 

After lacrosse season I immediately started training for football. Going to every weight training, practice and speed training I could. I lost even more weight after sophomore football season. I had lost 40 pounds, going from 198 to 150. During the summer I also had a growth spurt that took me from 5’5 to 5’10. 

Going into sophomore year everyone was complimenting me and this was the year that I started to want to get girls, so I focused less on school work and more on doing other things. Sophomore year school work was easy but I didn’t try like freshman year so my GPA continued to drop. I also got in a lot of trouble this year, the first time I got suspended was this year and I got in trouble for vaping during football season. It took me out for 3 games and a half quarter of the fourth which was also our last game of the season. That made me angry and I didn’t want to play anymore after that. 

During the middle of the year I had bumped heads with Mr. Thomas a lot about my behavior. From petty stuff like throwing food or being rude to a fellow classmate, I was always being talked to by Mr. Thomas. During the middle of the year I got into a fight with a kid in Gym, I had been suspended for three days and realized that sitting in the suspension room wasn’t fun so I vowed to stay out of trouble for the rest of the year. 

Well, going more towards the end of the year me and one of my classmates had heard about these kids that wanted to fight in our fourth hour and they fought at lunch and even though we didn’t do anything wrong (besides not report it) we got suspended for one day for watching and not doing anything about it. After that, I tried my hardest to stay out of trouble for the rest of the year because I could have gotten kicked out because i’m school of choice. So, I did as I said and didn’t get in trouble for the rest of that year. If I could redo sophomore year a part of me would, but a part of me wouldn't too. If I didn’t get in trouble sophomore year I would have never learned and I learn from my mistakes. 

Now that I’m on my junior year in high school I’m way more focused than I was last year. I actually have to focus on school if I want to do something good after high school. I’m taking CACC for collision repair but I want to work in construction. If I want to work in construction I have to find a good trade school or college I can go to to get me into a job. I want to come to school and get all A’s for the rest of the year. If I get a good score on my SATs i'm going to try to go to college but if not then I'm going to look for trade schools that offer construction classes. My mistakes in my past years in high school have set me back but I believe that if I get my act right, get good grades and do all of my work, I could get a really good job and be successful.