12th Grade
Greatest Growth Statement
Seven years is a long time to look over and point out one major growth. I started at the Dayton Regional STEM School (DRSS) in the sixth grade, and I have experienced some of the best lessons in Ohio. When asked what my greatest growth was in those seven years, I was overwhelmed with the endless possibilities of experiences to write about. Therefore, I decided to reach out to teachers that have contributed in shaping me who I am today; using the communication skills I’ve learned over the years, I spoke to them in hopes of gaining their perception of how they have seen me blossom. I was told that my communication skills have grown throughout the years; this served as a catalyst for my growth in collaboration skills: two things I exhibited the most while attending DRSS. Integrity, maturity, and most importantly my determination to be successful academically were examples of characteristics my teachers described me as.
From this feedback, I realized these growths all centered around determination.
I never thought that I was going to leave my home district. I was set on staying with the same group of friends until the day we graduated, and when I came to STEM, my life changed for the better. At first, I was lost; I had no one to talk to, I wasn’t doing so good in class. As a result, my mom and I sat down and made a plan for me to ask some other students to help me after school with subjects that I was confused in. Understanding my classes became my “job”, a job that I focused on. At times where other students couldn’t explain the work in a manner I could understand, I asked the teachers for upperclassmen that they thought would be able to help me. I believe this is where my sense of maturity began to factor in because I didn’t feel like being my normal, quirky self was accepted in the learning environment I was putting myself through. One project in particular that I struggled with was the “Game Character Scaling Project” in seventh grade. For some reason, I was unable to comprehend how a scale factor would apply to a complex shape, and I sat down with a student that had taken the class, for 30 minutes a day after school where they explained to me that I was missing.
My “job” became an absolute determination for bettering myself. I was becoming more mature but something was off; I wanted to be better than everyone else to the point where I wouldn’t let another student borrow a highlighter so that they could properly RAHA their homework and get their credit that they deserved. I wanted my grade to be better than theirs, and it wasn’t a group project, so I didn’t see why I had to help them. Then I came to the realization during the “Economics of Castle Design” project, my group was struggling because we had wasted our budget and were going to fail. Another group had started allowing us to use some of their leftover supplies and in that moment I realized that helping others succeed might make me feel good as well as allow me to gain more friends.