1. Acceptance to my first college. Opening up that first college letter from Penn State, reading the first line that says I was accepted and nothing else. This was the pivotal moment where my hard work in high school paid off. Although I will not be attending that university in the fall, just knowing that all the late nights of countless homework and hours of test prep was worth it in the end. "The site of it printed in capital letters on the...page" was an exhillirating feeling (Lahiri 89).
2. Receiving an A on my Honors Trig Final. For those of you who don't know me, I am not a math person. Never have been and never will. Math, no matter what form of it, just doesn't click with me. I still challenge myself in AP math classes though to try and form a better relationship with the subject. Last year I took Honors Trig with Mrs. Petite. That class rattled and shook my brain more than any one I had ever taken, but I worked hard all throughout the year and...I got an A on the final! I couldn't believe it, I was absolutly astonished that I had done it. To this day, "there is something in that [moment] that seems to inspire absolute confidence" in myself (Wilde 32).
3. The first 7 I ever received in AP English will go down in history. I still have the paper in my old binder underneath my bed so I will never forget. It was the paper that we wrote after we watched the Hurricane Katrina documentary and read an article on it in AP English 11. To my first 7 paper: "I am bound to thee forever" (Shakespeare 3.3.212).
4. The day my team beat the Dream Team. I have blogged about this experience before as my favorite day in AP English 12. If you would like to know the details of this magnificent day, see that post. Jackie, Katie, Nicola, and I made a great team. I knew we could beat the Dream Team. "And have we not affections?/ Desires for [10 extra credit points]?...as the [Dream Team] have?" (Shakespeare 4.3.108-109). Of course we do!!
5. Passing both my AP tests last year. I waited for what felt like the entire summer to get those test scores in the mail. I studied so many hours for the apush exam it is unreal. "[Those tests], an entity shapeless and weightless, managed nevertheless to distress [me] physically, like the scratchy tag of a shirt [I] had been forced to wear" (Lahiri 76). All that studying means less studying in college now!
6. Maintaining a 4.5 GPA all three quarters of my Senior year. I hope to continue this trend all the way to graduation. I'm happy that I did not/tried not to let Senioritis get the best of me. Lady Bracknell says that "Ignorance is like a delicate fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone" (Wilde 13). I am proud to say that I did not let ignorance and laziness stand in my way of finishing off my last year of high school strong.
7. Finishing my college essay was an amazing feeling. I feel that that essay is the best piece of work I have ever written. I worked so hard on that paper to impress all the colleges I applied to. I read it and edited it so many times I had the entire essay memorized. I could honestly recite it back to you today if you would like. My essay basically took over my life but thankfully "it no longer looms over [my] life, darkening it without warning as it used to do" (Lahiri 78).
8. Getting over a 100% on the 10th grade research project. Jackie could agree that this was one of the most unbearable things we have ever had to do. I remember sitting in her office for hours at a time staring at the computer screen trying to type this paper. It didn't help that our topic was "does diet and exercise directly correlate with academic success?" I mean, "that [topic] is nonsense," of course there is a direct correlation (Wilde 7). But our group managed to dish out an amazing research paper that scored well above our expectations.
9. Turning in that first 18 page Data Sheet on Othello. I remember thinking to myself at 2:00 a.m. the night before it was due, "Kill me tomorrow; let me live tonight!" (Shakespeare 5.2.80). I never thought that I would get that thing done..or that I would get an A on it!
10. This blog post. "[I] realized there's no need to lie. Not technically" for I honestly didn't think that I would be able to think of 10 "blogworthy" academic achievements that I have had in my high school career (Lahiri 96). But I did and now I feel very accomplished and pleased with myself.
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