Sruthi+M

[|afa]I came into high school wide-eyed and confused, but also with a huge grin on my face and tons of hope for the next four years of my life. I had just moved to Cary from California and had left behind all my friends that I had grown up with, but in a childish, almost immature way, I believed that my life would always be great and that there really could never be a block in the road too large to stop me from getting by. I, like most others in this class, cared a whole lot about my grades, not because I loved school or even getting straight As…but because I didn’t know there was another option. From the first day of Kindergarten, my parents had developed this standard that I was always supposed to get great grades. It was like a “you’re going to get good grades…or else.” I didn’t find out what that or else meant until this past year. So the first two years, I spent most of my time just working on school, but still never really learning how to study because freshman and sophomore year were a joke. I would spend a lot of time playing tennis and going to my soccer practices. My dad had grown up playing a ton of sports so I grew up loving them, but after the intramural practices with the varsity soccer girls freshman year, I wimped out of tryouts, and that is one of the things I regret most about high school. It’s little things like those that I feel could’ve taken me on a completely different road. But, as a habit, I like to not regret things, and so I think I made the most of my high school experience. I studied hard, but when it mattered the most, I did a great job slacking. Personally, I don’t think I would be the person I am today without having slacked so much this year. It’s when the grades went down that I realized that there was so much more to life than grades. My life didn’t suck when I was failing like 6 of my 10 classes. Of course, it would’ve been nice if I hadn’t been failing them, but the important part, the ambition to do well still resides within and I think that’s what matters most. I know that a quick year of my life isn’t going to matter in the long run, but the effect it’s had on me definitely will. Similarly, I’ve learned a lot in many other aspects also during high school, I never was really shy, but I definitely became more comfortable with who I was and learned the importance of going with the flow. A lot has changed in my life these four years, but a couple of things have stayed constant and they are my optimist attitude about basically everything in life and my huge, grin from ear to ear J http://animoto.com/play/EQKmwaYucvzShWlqeb7HmQ