My High School Experience
For a majority of teens, high school is always a very emotional time. For me, high school experience was a long and frustrating learning experience that I would not wish on anyone. It was unforgettable time that played a central role in shaping my perception about life. When I look back to that school in the island, I acknowledge that everyone has the potential to succeed in life despite their prevailing challenges.
My challenges at school were affiliated with my background. Being the first child in a single parent family of eight, the available resources were never available to sustain all of us adequately. My mother worked so hard to take care of us but the burden of bringing up eight children was too tough to bear. Often times, food and shelter were the only things we considered basic. My mother had to work for three shifts to raise enough money to raise us. Despite her commitment and hard work, school fees was hard to come by and I often had to skip school for lack of fees.
By the time I was in high school, three of my younger siblings had already joined school and that was when things stared deteriorating. Coincidentally, it was at the same time that I was in high school. Seeing my mother struggle to raise fees for the four of us, I decided to take up the role of the father we never had and help my mother take care of us. At age 14, I decided to seek employment to help raise my own fee. Luckily, I secured a job at a nearby library as a library assistant. Balancing school and work was the toughest thing I had to endure. On many occasions, I had to work for extra shifts to make extra money. As such, my concentration and performance at school significantly dropped to the extent of my classmates nicknaming me ‘sleepyhead’.