ORNELLA'S REFLECTION ESSAY
Red. White. Blue. The police siren lights flickered while the only thing my ears could discern was the honking of other anxious cars. I opened the car door to my first day of school and stepped out into completely new territory: middle school. My hands trembled as I recounted the occurrences within the past hours. The car crash had become a living slideshow within my mind, as I constantly saw our broken windshield, man's body and my sister's adverse reaction to the disaster. The beginning to my experience at ACLC was as traumatic as the first day of middle school can be, but it left a brighter imprint on who I would later on become. Because of ACLC my adolescent experience was highlighted with growth, problem solving, and even the occasional tribulation.
My middle school years were focused on growth, and not just my height. I slowly discovered myself through various friendships, life experiences and even classes. As I began Middle School, I tried my best to build relationships with as many other learners as possible. I soon came to learn that quality outweighs quantity, since having stability in a friendship is the key to success. I began to pinpoint who was the most beneficial to my life, and who I would trust overall. This helped me during my roller coaster moments of ups and downs. Whenever I had moments that seemed like utter failure, I had to figure out how to get back up and work harder. These life experiences taught me perseverance through the blinding failures I had to entail. As time went on, I started focusing more on classes and choosing what felt most important or enjoyable to me. I discovered my love for english and the human mind, which would lead me towards my future career path. But fortunately, Middle School was just the beginning. Next up was High School.
AN INTRODUCTION TO MIDDLE SCHOOL YEARS
THE HIGH SCHOOL JOURNEY
Personal Qualities, Work Habits And Attitudes
Entering freshman year was new territory and started my journey in finding who I am and where I wanted to end up. I started off the first year of highschool rough, and decided it was time to start self managing my time and to take responsibility over my academic environment.. This ended up reflecting in my grades that had positive changes after I discovered how to apply myself. Additionally, I started to look outside of ACLC’s boundaries and research different career options that could potentially interest me. This helped me gather the resources around me that could end up preparing me for my major in psychology later down the road. Lastly, I started to get out of my comfort zone and run for a variety of leadership positions in my school. As I became more involved in the school’s activities, the more I felt connected to the community and began to adapt to new social interactions and the overall system. These lessons lead me to learn how to manage my time and energy better, find my career path, and manage/adapt to different environments.
New Basics
As I took on more leadership roles, I had to learn how to communicate better within groups and one on one with other individuals. I started publically speaking a lot more and getting attuned with the environment around me at events I had to speak at:ConCon, Leadership Class, ETC. Not only did I have to learn how to speak in front of others, I also had to learn to listen carefully to what others wanted from me. For example, during Leadership class as a Co Chair I have to stay aware of what the class is talking about or requesting so that we can get ahead of a proposal rather than feel stuck. Outside of classes and school environments, I started to become socially aware of the restrictions for women in leadership positions, like Female CEOS’s. I began to start branching out and learning more about Diversity Inclusion strategies in different companies and applying them to leadership classes. Having the minorities of the class feel heard is always important to keep them included and have the majorities keep an open mind.
Thinking and Reasoning Skills
The beginning of my freshman year was the hardest for me academically and socially. Unfortunately, I didn’t initially know how to balance my social life with my academic life which ended up negatively affecting my grades. I promptly realized my free periods were not as spread out as before, and I found myself having only one class on monday while having a full schedule the next day. This triggered me to realize the underlying issue and problem solve to reach the verdict that I needed to learn how to manage my time. I started doing my homework before interacting with friends and found that my grades improved afterwards. This taught me how to not just manage my free time after school, but also during school. If i had not learned how to manage my time during freshman year, the following years would have been a lot less structured and beneficial to my highschool experience.
Leaping into sophomore year, I started to investigate into what career path interested me the most. I knew I didn’t want to do anything involving mathematics, but other than that I drew a blank when it came to my future. By the middle of sophomore year I started to get less enthusiastic about my future and frustration took its place. By the end of junior year I had finally decided that I would pursue psychology because of my fascination of abnormal psychology. This made me research more into psychology and sociology as a possible major for me. I started to look for outside resources and helped develop my sociability skills with strangers.
Interpersonal and Collaborative Ability
Senior year could have potentially ended up being one of the most stressful years for me due to how many leadership positions I was in. I am leading JC, Leadership, Governing Board, and Hannah camp this year. I was initially terrified of running for so many jobs at once, especially during one of the most stressful years of my life. Now I am in the loop a lot more, and know how the school is being run. I began to work more collaboratively in teams, since all of my leadership positions require help from others to get ahead. Being able to reach a consensus during a team meeting was always helpful, especially during JC when the jury has to agree on a verdict. After I started getting out of my comfort zone a lot more, I realized how much I enjoyed the time I spent on changing aspects of the school. I have also learned how to pass down this knowledge onto the lower class men, especially through JC and Leadership. I’ve encouraged multiple learners to seek leadership roles and always give them background on my experience and how I got to where I am. Knowing how to adapt to leadership roles is really beneficial to know at a young age.
Technology
During the summer of my Junior year, I decided to join an immersion program at Pixar with an organization called Girls Who Code. I learned how to code several different programming languages and created relationships with a lot of the women at pixar. By the 5th week in the program, we were all put into groups to create a final project for the next two weeks. My group decided to code a website called Happy Mind that targeted the negative mental health stigma. On the website, we offered different mental health information and also a zipcode mental health finder to help users explore help near them. After Girls Who Code, I continued to code and decided to use my computer to start new projects.
Conclusion
In conclusion, my high school experience has been a rollercoaster. I have involved myself a lot into my community and know how to get out of my comfort zone. These are only the first steps to helping me adapt to my college experience but I am prepare more now than ever. If I had not gone to ACLC, I wouldn’t have had as many opportunities to learn and grow. Being in a welcoming environment helped me thrive as a learner and also helped me steer towards my future career path. Not only that. But also helped me get out of my comfort zone and learn how to interact with a diverse community with an open mind. I can only hope that my college experience will be as extensive and perfect as ACLC was.