Dropping High School

Daniel Medina Due Date: 9/6/2005

English Comp. Writing Assignment #1

Although I've only been alive for twenty years, I have had many experiences that have been significant enough to change the way I am. When we are young we are just learning about life. The definition of young, according to Dictionary.com is as follows; being in an early period of life, development or growth. I think there are a lot of experiences that have helped me grow both physically and mentally as an adolescent. An important occurrence in my life was when I dropped out of high school. The situation I was in both changed who I am as a person and the way I think about things.

Half way through tenth grade, when I was sixteen years old, I stopped going to high school. I was always a good student until I got to high school. The summer before I dropped out, I worked in construction and had a part time job. I always knew I wanted to go into the construction field when I grew up but that summer really made up my mind. When I was at started high school I found the material a lot of my teachers were teaching me was wasting my time and would not be useful to me in the future. Also, I was trying to learn in an environment where kids that did not want to learn and did not care about school. It was then when I decided to drop out of school, obtain my G.E.D., and go to technology college. I started working fulltime construction and began studying a twelve hundred page G.E.D. book. I went on to do excellent on my G.E.D. exam, and start college two years later.

I think this situation forced me to grow up faster than the normal teenager. While a lot of my friends we going out partying on a school night I would be sleeping because I had work at 7 in the morning. I started paying some of my own bills to lessen the burden on my mother, a single mom with two kids. I started to learn about taxes, bills and what they call the "real world."

My mother and I had many long discussions before I made my final decision about school. I knew that I could not just drop out and not go to college.