11th Grade
It was August 20th- four days into the first semester of my Junior year. Two boys I had grown up with were taken away from my community in a fatal crash. Hundreds of people came to the funeral, which was hosted by the local high school. Students from surrounding schools were impacted. How could God break hundreds of hearts?
My life changed forever on September 29th. He came into my room in the middle of the night, screaming about how I had parked in his parking spot. I was hurt and he was arrested. How could God not protect me from the man that brought me into this world? That’s how I lost my father, but he is still very much alive.
Our community lost another young man to a car accident October 15th. Again, hundreds of hearts were broken. Again God, really?
It’s hard to believe in something greater than yourself, that is supposed to keep you safe, when horrible events are a constant reality.
Every time something bad happens, there is an automatic response of “I’m sorry”. What does that heal? Nothing. “I’ll pray for you and your family,” “Everything will be okay, just pray about it.” I’ve always said that I am a Christian but I have had my doubts in the legitimacy of the Lord.
After a series of bad events that occurred with my father a year before I lost him, I went to a church retreat. I had never felt so close with God and felt the need to love and forgive everyone who had ever wronged me in my life than I did the day that we had left. I was taught that God descended so we can all ascend, and in order for us to make our ascent we need to be able to move on. We were offered a carabineer, and by taking that it meant that you were ready to make your ascent. I hesitated before taking it, but eventually I did.
When I came home, I told all of my friends about how touched I was and messaged all of the people whom I had problems with and we talked through our differences. I waited until my father had gotten home from rehab; I told him how badly he had hurt me emotionally and that everything was going to be okay because God was going to help us grow together.
I was on this spiritual high, and it seemed like no one could pull me off of. Then it happened. My house caught on fire and we were forced to move out. My neighbor robbed us of what we had left in the house. My great grandma passed away. My great aunt and uncle were both diagnosed with cancer.
I began questioning my faith the day my great grandma passed. She was the most God-loving person I have ever met, yet he took her for himself. It seemed so selfish and it started to not make sense.
How is there this magical floating being in the sky that is supposed to make everything alright?
Why doesn’t he ever work his magic on my problems?
Why do they keep piling up?
Is there something I am doing wrong?
Does God hate me?
God loves all of his children. Remember that. God has a plan. Remember that. Times get tough, but there is always a light at the end of the tunnel, and you have to remember that.
Believing in God gets hard sometimes; all you ever want to do is blame him for everything bad that has ever happened. That’s what I did, but eventually it was time to move on and not waste my time hating him. It was time to start rebuilding our love relationship. I have so many things to thank God for, despite the many obstacles I went through.
Throughout eleventh grade, I have grown in an outstanding number of skills One that stands out the most is my creativity through organization.
Playing sports year round has taken many tolls on my ability to stay organized and focused. It is difficult to carry a full backpack and a sports bag full of heavy equipment. At the end of 10th grade, I realized I was carrying an excessive amount of supplies. I had problem on my hands.
The first day of junior year arrived and I had gotten all of the supplies the teachers had instructed, and of course, a few extras like rainbow highlighters, pens, and such. I made it about a month into school when I realized I has a problem focusing on notes and other school work because I was getting distracted by all of the colors, and I was still carrying way too much stuff.
I went home and got a little creative. I decided I needed to minimize, which in this case meant, one highlighter, one pen, and two pencils, binders for my classes where all of the assignments were hole punched and put into their respective places, and I converted my planner to an online version so that it was one less thing for me to carry around. I made a plan that would help me not focus on colors and stay organized without having to have additional folders, binders, and such… I use one color of highlighter per quarter. This meant that one color got used for homework, notes, and any other assignment. First quarter I used yellow, second quarter I used orange, third quarter I used pink, and fourth quarter I used green.
With the new color system and minimal supplies in my backpack, I was able to easily grab assignments. It was harder than I had expected to get used to my plain looking notes, but I was learning how to focus on them better.
During first quarter, I used a yellow highlighter to help me keep track of my assignments and keep me focused on what was actually on a worksheet or assignment. As you can see above, in Chemistry we began the school year by learning about lab safety, which is extremely important because if there is an emergency, everyone needs to know exactly what to do. I used the yellow highlighter to underline/bold the rules, or parts of the rule that I felt were the most important and I might be tested on.
During second quarter, we were learning about the Periodic Table, specifically what each number and symbol meant. This unit was very important because it is such a basic concept of Chemistry that is needed for just about everything that we did for the remainder of the year. I was struggling with memorizing where everything was. I took it upon myself to create a system where I would start my memorizing one piece and once I got it down, I would highlight it and try to move on to remembering what had been highlighted as well as another piece, and so on.
During third quarter, we were learning about Inorganic Nomenclature. This is naming types of reactions. This was important because a chemist needs to be able to easily communicate or comprehend what type of reaction was occurring.
I have always struggled with some concepts, but since I have become minimal, I can really focus on what confuses me and not have to worry as much on concepts that I understand by not having excess or unneeded information, doodle, or distractions written on my papers.
In first quarter, we started by reviewing systems of equations, which I understood from previous knowledge.
Second quarter we had been introduced to “Graphing Polynomial Functions.” There were lots of new definitions and equations that we had to make sure we understood, so I highlighted them. Occasionally I would write some of the concepts that I felt like were confusing me in a composition notebook for later review.
During third quarter, we started working with inverse relations. Therefore, not only did we have to keep track of out answers to problems but we also had to keep track of their inverses. I did this by, again, highlighting key terms and suck, but making sure that I highlighted the answers to the questions.
Eleventh grade is definitely a year that changed my life for the better and it was just through organization. I discovered that I am not a person that can focus on lots of colors and binders as I had thought that I was. I will definitely be continuing to use this skill in twelfth grade and college.
