The End and The Beginning

         Honestly, it’s kind of hard to believe that my high school career is coming to an end. After all, part of my Junior year and my entire Senior year has been plagued by the coronavirus pandemic. Even though it feels like Covid has lasted forever, I realize that I actually spent more time in regular in-person high school than I have in the pandemic. It’s interesting how a period of bad experiences can stretch out a person’s perception of time. I feel like I definitely accomplished a good amount, while also having fun. I also met some of my closest friends in high school. It was definitely pretty tough at times, especially when somehow my classes always end up giving tests on the same days… 

        Regardless, my time in high school has really shaped me into the person that I am now. I have a couple of fond memories of the school; One academic experience that really stands out to me during my years at THS was the Bacteria Identification lab that we did in GBBE. This project really encapsulates the things that I want to do in the future. This project consisted of a group of two receiving two plates of agar with a random bacteria. Naturally, I chose to work with a friend. Our job was to correctly identify the bacteria in our agar plate out of around 30 options by using multiple lab techniques. The thing with these tests was that they required a lot of application of prior knowledge that we had learned in the class, such as pipetting, inoculating, Gram staining, etc. It was extremely fun researching what tests that the bacteria would react to and actually conducting these tests and analyzing the results the next day. Using the results of the tests, we had to eliminate the types of bacteria that the test results did not fit until we were sure of the identity of the bacteria. This project was really unique from the other projects that I have done in the past because there was virtually no assistance and if you messed up one portion of the test, you could misidentify a bacteria. It actually felt like I was part of a research group trying to figure out the identity of this unknown bacteria. It could have been a pretty stressful experience, but working with a friend made it so much more fun to investigate the properties of the bacteria in question. I had always been interested in biology and research, but this project heightened my motivation to learn more and go into these fields. 

        I think that the most important thing that I have learned from high school was how to be less introverted and shy. I still am a little, but considerably less. There are many classes, namely English, that make sure to include various different types of projects and presentations. Though I detested them at the time, I now realize how instrumental those were to develop my interpersonal and communication skills, especially with public speaking. Giving presentations used to be so hard to do, but with practice, I’ve gotten so much better. This also ties in with one of the things that high school has taught me: self-improvement. I’ve always heard that practice makes perfect, but it is actually so true. I improved upon my weaknesses by constantly working through them and pushing to immerse myself in such situations where I would be out of my comfort zone in high school. The experiences that I have had through high school have been invaluable. 

        All in all, I had a lot of fun during high school, while learning a lot as well. Being more fortunate than others who don't have access to education, I am extremely thankful for the opportunities that were presented to me, and I hope to strive to improve myself even further in college.