Graduation Speech : High School Graduation

I have been going to school since I was four years old and, that means that I have been attending school twenty to twenty two years, including kindergarten, middle school, high school and now college. As every student, I had my ups and downs in school; I had some failures and some successes. One of the failures that affected me the most and that I will always remember was the time that I was in high school during my junior year. I failed almost all my classes and, I only passed two classes and with a C. In the other hand I had some really good success. The most recent one and the one that I am still happy about is getting my Family Development Credential. We learn from our mistakes and also from our successes, these two times in my life

So far, all throughout high school, I have done my best in school. I strive to get the best grades I can. There are many opportunities out there, college related, that many people out of high school don’t have. I make sure I take advantage of these opportunities because all the hard work will be very rewarding in the end. During my sophomore year of high school, I had the chance to get into a four-year program that would have me take college classes while still in high school. Also, I would be able to job shadow different careers, practice interviewing skills, and get an internship. By the end of this program I would have an associate’s degree and have developed very useful skills necessary for a career. This whole program would be free.

Frank Bruni, the author of Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be, dedicates his fact-filled odyssey by stating, “To all the high school kids in this country who are dreading the crossroads of college admissions and to all the young adults who felt ravaged by it. We owe you and the whole country a better, more constructive way.” Bruni then proceeds by assaulting the very foundation on which the modern higher education system is built off of, the notion that not all colleges are created equal. He theorizes that a college is not based solely on name and prestige, but what you are able to make of it and what a college is able to offer you. Pressing onwards, Bruni contends that there is no ideal

During our lives, most of us have hated getting up early. Whether we as humans enjoy mornings or not, we’re always looking forward to that unforgettable day. That special is high school graduation for me. Graduation is a ceremony that recognizes students that have excelled through school. Graduation was one of the best days of my life, perhaps even better than the day that I started college. There is no other day like graduation where there comes this feeling of success, achievement, and excitement.

In the years of 2012-2013, Oklahoma 's percent of students graduating with a high school diploma was 84.8%. In 2012-2013, the graduation rate was at one of the highest points it has ever been at. It is crazy to think that over 1.2 million students drop out every year just in the United States. That is a student ever 26 seconds or you could think of it like 7,000 students a day. A student that gets a high school diploma but does not go to college is going to be doing better than students that drop out. The majority of jobs will not hire you if you don 't simply have a high school diploma. The income of college degrees, what work expects from people, and how it all relates to high school is important in todays society.

once in college, Rose explained “all in all there was a dreary impotence to the years, and isolation, and a deep sadness about my father” (44).

“Congratulations! You have been accepted to Bentley University for fall of 2015!” Words could not express how ecstatic this message made me. As soon as the acceptance email popped up on my phone, I screamed, dropped my backpack, and sprinted over to my track and field teammates to celebrate this triumphant occasion. After years of challenging AP courses, eleven seasons of tiring school sports, and countless extracurricular clubs, I finally felt like all of my hard work had paid off. At that moment, the only thought in my head was “I’m going to Bentley!” My dream — an aspiration I’ve had since my freshman year of high school — was becoming a reality.

Due to a lack of decent jobs, half of all college graduates are still relying on their parents financially when they are two years out of school. In the US the bottom 40 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth, and College tuition has risen 10 times faster than the median family income. These are just a few issues that my generation, and more to come will face. My dream requires fair access to jobs and educational opportunities, work, and fair pay, all while empowering individuals to pursue their own passions.

My legs where tired, my mind was racing, my hands were shaking, and I had nowhere to run. Walking up the stairs to a pair of large glass doors just terrified me. I know I was going to be able to survive. I had to; there is no other way. Every step I took towards the entry way I could feel my heart rate accelerated as I cautiously looked around for a seat. I sat in the third row of an auditorium looking room. There were around twenty to thirty people sitting around looking at a blank projection screen waiting for my new teacher to arrive. In my head I had a description of a college professor which would be a older gentleman with brown laptop case and look intimidating and make me want to cry on the first day by assigning paper after paper for the enjoyment of watching me fail. I didn 't feel prepared at all high school was so different students didn 't live there and no one to remind students to do all homework the homework there assigned. My high school failed to prepare me because in high school we didn’t receive homework, and didn’t mentally prepare me for the new independence that I now possess.

College hasn’t really been much of a choice for me—same way for walking the stage at graduation in high school. Yeah the “option” to opt out has “always” been there, but God forbid I get to make my own choices as an adult by my mother (but that’s something else entirely). My relatives’ continuous badgering, threats, and my patience running out after fifteen years of their actions “convinced” me to start to college anyways. I mustn’t leave out the fact that I also convinced myself that if I started college early, I would potentially graduate around the same time as one of my favorite cousins and one of my friends. I started taking dual credit courses in high school to shut my mother up about advanced schooling, ended up liking the teachers

“The future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens. We have everything we need to be that nation … and yet, despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we have let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher’s quality fall short and other nations outpace us”-President Obama (Splitt).

their high school diploma. When P-TECH initially started, it included on grade 9 and added a grade every year until it became a complete high school. The focus of P-TECH is to provide students with college level work in high school so they can earn their Associate degree at City Tech in what are called the grade 13 and 14. In personal interview with Mr. Brian Donnelly, the Deputy Director of Early College Initiative at CUNY, he described that in students who are part of P-TECH experience grades 13 and 14, which entails that they are still a high school student because they have some high school requirements left and also have not completed the CUNY proficiencies. However, students are still taking college courses and therefore can complete up to an Associate’s degree in CUNY. Currently, the grade 14 has not been added to the P-TECH schools, but this will added within the next upcoming year.

In 2010, Grant High School, set out to improve (Lambertson 42-43). This school quickly went from being in the worst 5% of schools in Michigan to the superior 92% (Lambertson 43-45). This school poured effort into its programs to try to bring up test grades (Lambertson 42-45). Amazingly, Grant High School brought its average ACT score up 2.4 points in around three years (Lambertson 45). However, in the end, was this school successful? Were its students prepared to succeed?

In most jobs, when you apply there are requirements that you need to be able to be even considered a good candidate for the job and be hired. Did you graduate high school? Do you have a college degree? A 3.00 GPA or above? Previous experience for at least two years? Most guardians tell you to work hard in school to have a bright future. If you want to find a good job they suggest you to look what are the requirements to be able to even be consider. When you start high school in some schools they have already assigned you to who you will end up been. If you got high school credits when still in middle school then you are advanced you go in a certain group. The teachers always tell you what you need to be able to attend a University. The teacher do not advertise students to start at a community college but are constantly reminding you how important is to have a higher education. The high school institutions has allowed the negative stereotypes about the students that attend community colleges because they contribute to the negativity tours does students. This stereotypes lead to discrimination.

The average person has a very limited mortality, so why would someone spend most of their time in school and accrue debt that will take years to pay off? People in general go to college to better themselves and accomplish what one wants out of life. What’s better way for a person to live life and experience it to the fullest than to do the dream job they want, or have a reserve of wealth that they can spend according to how they see fit? According to one’s parents or their teachers getting an education can indeed be the key to a higher quality of life, but obtaining a higher education is a facade masked by the propaganda of the media and one’s mentors. Going to college will make things more complicated and create more problems than it solves.