High School Graduate in the Real World :: Personal Narrative Essays

High School Graduate in the Real World With surprisingly minimal reluctance I face my new life. My heart is filled with excitement, while my mind teems with anxiety. Everything has changed. I suppose it really hasn’t, but it seems as if one little difference can make you feel like the whole world is turning inside out. I go about what will soon become routine for me without any second thoughts. Perhaps none of this has sunk in yet. I sit alone in a tiny cubicle only about five feet square and examine my new surroundings. I have been given all the little luxuries that such an entrapment can afford. The outdated computer that noisily hums and groans, looking for sympathy. The adding machine, the pens, the highlighter, piles of papers and documents. It is all that I have right now. I am dressed in a new gray business suit, one of many gifts that I recently received. A new dress code for a new lifestyle. Only two days earlier I was standing on a stage, looking out on nearly one thousand people, summing up thirteen years in five minutes. How do you express what effect thirteen years of schooling have had on you and your classmates in a new and unused way? My valedictorian address was one of the hardest papers-or speeches in this case-that I ever had to compose. The effort put into it also made it the most rewarding as well. â€Å"For a college application I was asked what saying I would publicize if given the opportunity. My answer was ‘Living is doing, not merely being.’† Those two sentences were my favorite part of the speech. I talked about taking charge of our own lives and making a positive difference in the world. I didn’t waste any time following my own advice. Two days later I am starting what will probably become one of the most challenging but personally fulfilling experiences of my life. At six o’clock this morning my alarm clock once again did not fail to wake me from my peaceful state. I can be so resentful of that. Only seconds before I had been driving as quickly as my car would go around hairpin turns on a seemingly endless highway with a strong cool breeze blowing my hair in all directions. The remorseless beeping brought me back to reality. I went about my usual morning routine, except this time my destination would not be the same.