Graduation Speech

Graduation Speech

In the beginning of this school year I was attending Ewing High School during the day from 7:45am until 2:30pm and I began working at the mall the beginning of November; by the end of November, working, going to school, and staying on top of my school work became exhausting; having bad headaches, extremely tired and feeling sick. I thought my body needed to adjust to working and going to school almost every day, but in reality, my body was telling me I was five weeks with my baby boy. Waking up to morning sickness made arriving to school on time 10x's harder than it already was. Most days my dad or grand pop would have to drop me off about an hour late. In order to graduate on time, my guidance counselor told me that I would have to pass all 8 of my classes this year. Arriving to school late almost every day, I was not passing my first morning class and was put on "the senior failing list" meaning I was not going to graduate this year. I had passing grades in all of my classes, but was basically failing school because of my attendance. I began feeling like all the hard work I was putting into school, was a waste of time. As long as I was attending Ewing High, there was no way I was graduating on time. I would have to go back next year trying to finish high school on top of taking care of a baby. That thought alone had me feeling stressed and scared about how my future was now looking. After finding out I was on the "senior failing list", I didn't want to go back to school, but my mom pushed me to go. I was not giving 100% anymore, so my grades began to fall behind. I was completely discouraged with school until my guidance counselor called me to her office and recommended me to Hamilton High West night school. I had to pass the classes in which I was getting credit attendance. The good news was that there was now hope again for me graduating on time, the bad news was that grades are easy to quickly go down, but took much longer and was harder to bring back up. In December, before Christmas break, a man from Fortis Institute came to Ewing High to talk about what his school had to offer; I was interested and went to the school during Christmas break where I had a tour of the school, took a test, filled out an application and was accepted to take classes in the fall of 2011 for medical insurance billing and coding. I was able to bring my grades back up to pass my remaining classes and began night school at Hamilton High West February 2011.

I decided to put working aside to focus on school. My first week of night school went extremely well. After receiving all of my work, and everything I needed to do in order to graduate, I did not feel overwhelmed. I actually felt relieved; I was able to work at my own pace, and was very motivated to get everything done on time. Hamilton High West was a new school for me that I had never been to before; I didn't