Written by Resident MJ
I could actually make it. I’ve watched all the movies where all those kids walked down the line in their cap and gown, and posed with their parents to take pictures, but I never let myself believe that would be me. I just wasn’t made for that life. But yet, here I am graduating May 15th, 2015.
If you were to meet me a year ago, an angry girl sitting at home suspended from school with F’s on her report card shoved in her backpack, you wouldn’t believe I was graduating a year early from high school with an above average GPA. But here I am with a maroon cap and gown ready to receive my diploma.
I started my freshman year on the wrong foot—scratch that—the wrong everything. It wasn’t that I wasn’t smart that made me fail all my classes, it was basically the failure to show up in the first place. Then to top it off, when I did show up, it was on my terms. My terms meant I would be under the influence of something with a mile high attitude. So if I wasn’t truant, I was suspended.
A quick turn of events led me here, to the New Mexico Boys’ and Girls’ Ranches. After all the ridiculous fights with staff and getting kicked out of class, and getting my behavioral levels lowered, I got to a point where I felt okay enough to find motivation in school.
In all honesty, I didn’t believe I could make it to graduation. I didn’t think girls like me got to be the success stories. I was the freshman in high school who was never at school since I always had somewhere better to be, and I was supposed to be just another sad teen statistic hooked on heroin further down the road. But then I found more to fight for. I learned I was worth fighting for.
By my sophomore year in high school, I had been living at the New Mexico Boys and Girls’ Ranch for a little over three months. I wanted to be free from the program so I rushed ahead and got the ball rolling with school. It wasn’t for me though, it was to save my brothers. After months of trying and getting exhausted, I was burned out and ready to give up. Every time I was right there ready to leave school, I received support from many of the staff I looked up to. Soon enough, I learned I am smart enough, I am worth it, and I am a success story. I would not become a depressing teen statistic of failure.
Suddenly, there I was completing class after class like my freshman year never existed. I was getting good grades, acing any subject I got started on, and soon enough I was ahead in school rather than behind. I became a model student even if my attitude didn’t always match the high school transcript with columns of completed classes. I can honestly say I worked hard.
There for a while, I had to be slowed down because if I were to continue at the rate I was going, I would have finished school in two years. It sounds like a great thing to have finished high school that fast, but if I was done with high school, it would mean I would have to go to college. It is hard to say I would have been ready for college that young.
Now I am in my third year of high school, and I am graduating already. I can’t help but look at where I was and where I am now. I have enrolled in CNM for the summer and I have applications submitted to colleges in state to start out, and I have plans to travel somewhere in between. Currently, I plan to attend school at the University of New Mexico where I will study social work in hopes to work with the hundreds of foster kids around the world. I am ready to help others become a success story as well.
