High School Dropout: How I Escaped From This

It is said that every year around 1.2 million students drop out of high school. The United States had some of the highest graduation ranks for developed countries, but it is now placed at 22 out of 27 on the list. Every 26 seconds or 7,000 students a day dropping out of high school. This is one of the high school dropout essays in which I am going to share personal experience of how I got away from being dropped out of school by developing mt study skills. 

Memorization is the major teaching method that I have learned in my classroom experiences, and if I want to succeed in college, I need to change my learning from memorization to understanding the topics. I am going to do this by joining clubs and organizations to have others input and help me learn the material of that topic.

One of the things I will struggle the most with in college is not to just remember the material, but to learn and understand the material. My strength in high school was being able to read over the material and memorize the important things that will be on the test. My major weakness is finding the time to push myself to learn and be able to understand the topic enough so that I can teach others. In 5th grade I had this amazing teacher his name was Mr. Pee. My favorite thing to do in Mr. Pee’s class was take notes. Especially when we did science notes. Mr. Pee wanted us to not only memorize the things we were learning in science but to put a picture to it and understand the concept. He would make us take notes in markers or color pencils to draw and make certain things pop. I think I was so successful in that class because I am more of a visual learner and having me take colorful notes and draw pictures that would help me understand what we were learning was a key concept that I learned about myself.

In 7th grade I had yet another amazing teacher and his name was Mr. Mummert. Mr. Mummert taught 7th grade biology. Just like Mr. Pee he would make us take very colorful notes and always made sure we learned the concept by comparing it to everyday life skills. His labs where not just instructions on a paper and we had to write what happened, but they were simple everyday things just laying around the house and showed us how we could turn that into a science experiment. I loved the fact that I could remember the material because I just had to remember the life skill that came with it. Being able to put two and two together to me is understanding and applying on the Blooms Taxonomy pyramid.

Taking Dual credit was a very scary thing to me as a junior. I was going head first into a college class and I didn’t know what to expect. My first college class was U.S. History. I was incredibly nervous I was always good in my history classes, but that was just because I was good at memorizing the dates of when stuff happened. U.S. History had changed that for me. I hated going to class because all we would do is let her speak and do her powepoint and most of us would just take an hour nap. That class was full of exams and essays and powerpoints. Not just me but everyone in my class was on the verge of failing and I didn’t know why. It took me a while to realize she didn’t care what we wrote about just as long and the format was, the way she wanted it to be I would receive an A on the paper. After I found this trick, I was passing the class with a ninety-nine! This just completely threw what I thought college was about out the window. She showed me that as long as the professors happy my grade was happy too.

I think high school created an elementary school compared to college. And they have not taught me anything to help me in college. The only thing I would say that has helped in getting ready for college was Dual credit and even then, I had to find out about dual credit on my own because it was not highly recommended by counselors as much as AP Classes. I have emailed the counselors multiple times on what I should do to get ready for college and all I receive is an automated email on a check list for when I should start applying. I emailed my counselor to take me out of Pre-Cal because I wasn’t learning or grasping the material and she emailed me back saying she couldn’t do anything about it. Not only do I feel like I get no help from anyone, but I feel like they are just focused on the standardized test and making sure kids pass the STAAR test. They care about that test so much its like they have no time for classes that will help you in life and prepare for college.

In Professors’ place in the classroom is shifting to the side by Dan Berrett, he explains that professors are starting to become more student-centered than learner centered. Which is true because in student-centered classes it lets the professor get to know the students and figure out where they are at on an academic scale. Whereas learner centered classrooms are the professors talking and the student taking notes. In the article it brings up a quote that almost every professor says, “Why didn’t you learn this in high school?” Which is absolutely true. High school doesn’t teach us the basic skills to help us advance to college level classes. This is the reason why so many students fail or dropout their first year of college. But at the same time since it feels like every professor says this why don’t they know by now that most of their students don’t know how to properly write a paper in MLA format.

Last what I am going to write about is one of the things that will be a major struggle for me in college. It was learning and grasping the material and not just looking at a bunch of words and memorizing which word goes to what. Some of the strategies that I think will help me accomplish this goal is joining clubs and organizations where I can be surrounded by people who know what they are talking about and help me visually and mentally understand the curtain topic. According to ‘College clubs to join’ By Jenifer Finley she states that joining an academic club can help further your education and help you learn better because you will be surrounded by the people who are in the same degree or you can work with a professional. She also says that joining an Honors Society can help too. I can make time for them by revolving my schedule around them, or signing up for clubs that can meet together right after class.