Once a troublemaker, now a excellent student

Every single teenager has a different experience when it comes to their high school years. Some people love it and others don’t. It all depends on how you see it and how you express it. High school is the only time where you finally see yourself turning from a kid to an adult.

Students always struggle at first but then realize what they are doing is the way they don’t want to go in life. Luis Rodriguez is a senior who attends Augustus F. Hawkins and he talks about his struggles and his accomplishments throughout his high school experience.

Rodriguez talks about his experience from freshman to senior year. When he started freshman year he was a troublemaker and did not care about school as much as he does today, said Rodriguez.

Rodriguez expected freshman year to be easy and how everything would go smoothly. He also believed that it would be like middle school. However, he was wrong, he was failing his classes and he would make teachers cry. His path to success was far away from him.

During his sophomore year, Rodriguez thought he was an adult and how he was “independent.” Also he was known as hardheaded and thought he knew everything. He continued failing some of his classes while he was retaking classes from his freshman year.

Rodriguez quickly realized that he was not going to have enough credits to be considered a junior and he did not want that. As the semester was coming to a close he started to realized that he was wrong when it came to him knowing everything.

He began to change his actions and began improving little by little. By his junior year he was a lot wiser, a hard worker and mature. Rodriguez was passing all of his classes and he was not procrastinating and instead of making teachers cry he made them smile and he was very helpful.

By his senior year he considered himself as a proper adult — he was being treated as one as well. Not only by his previous and current teachers but by everyone in the school. Although his senior year was a bit stressful because he was very worried about big projects, college applications, and testing. That did not stop him from trying his very best.

Rodriguez will be attending Los Angeles Trade-Tech College and will be receiving his plumbing license in the future.

If Rodriguez had the opportunity to send himself a message from when he was a freshman he would tell himself “life in high school goes by fast, don’t mess around and be a hardhead because it is going to mess you up. Lastly, don’t eat a lot because you’ll gain a lot a weight,” said Rodriguez.