Follow Through

Follow Through

 If my Freshman self could see me (ALacombe) as I stand today, I believe that he would be proud that I made it through four years of high school. Four long years of stress and determination, filled with memories and laughter. Most of the stress stemmed from trying to climb the mountain of English assignments in the first two years of highschool, most recently that stress has been graduating on time, I’m sure we can all relate to that. I overcame these problems by locking in and doing school work by limiting distractions, like my hobby of playing video games. Which I still spend way too much time doing. 

Over the first two years of high school, I spent time with friends gaming over the lockdown and making memories, playing you guessed it Fortnite and a new game that became big in 2020 called Tom Clancy’s Rainbow six siege, much anger came from that game but I channeled that anger into doing my English assignments so I guess it helped. 

The first year of high school I did not know what I would make of myself when I graduated. If I graduated. We didn’t really start high school normally till junior year and here we are in our last year of high school wondering what our future holds. In freshman year I had no future plans like most of us but I knew I would be successful in some way and find a path I would follow. 

The path I set was to go straight into the workforce to do HVAC. I decided on this goal because my dad works in the career and owns his own business. My dad wanted me to join him after graduation so I based my goal off of what he told me and I researched and decided that this was the path I wanted to go on. This goal I set for myself in the early years of high school is still with me and I am determined to complete this goal no matter what. This is one goal I will not fail though I am no stranger to failure but I don’t think that is a bad thing. I believe failure is the biggest step towards success and failing in high school can prepare me for life after graduation.

 One of the goals I failed was to do baseball all four years but I got so caught up in life that things were jostled around leaving me no time or will to do it. I did baseball for one year but it didn’t feel the same and I had new responsibilities like babysitting my nephew after school and keeping up with grades. So I decided to part ways with the sport I loved to focus on my future. I had to sacrifice that goal like how a batter has to make a sacrificial bunt to advance the runner. Sometimes it will go as planned, laying a perfect bunt down the third base line or as life is, it will end up failing.

 Failing that goal allowed me to focus instead on seeing if the career I wanted to go into was the path for me. I worked every summer break and days off over the school year with my father doing simple and demanding work in the career and I started to enjoy it. JMG also gave me the opportunity to do the Career Exploration Badge which was 40 hours of shadowing a job career you wanted to go into solidifying my reason to go into HVAC. It also came with a sweet 500 dollar paycheck.

I never thought that a goal I set all the way back in Freshman year would still be with me today and that makes me feel confident, something I struggled to gain in my life because I felt that I had no meaning when I entered high school. I had nothing to look forward to but now I can’t wait to graduate and flip this chapter of my life and move onto bigger and better things. I hope all of you achieve your goals and can understand that sometimes you have to make sacrifices in life in order to pursue your dreams and complete your goals. Congratulations to the class of 2024, go forward, and live life.

“Graduation & Safe Driving” by State Farm is licensed under CC BY 2.0.