High School Reflective Essay

Before even entering high school, I made a decision that would ruin the next few years. Looking back, I had no idea it would have impacted me as much as it did, but even now I still wouldn’t have changed that decision. Everything that came after that decision, no matter how difficult, shaped me into who I am today, and I was able to meet some pretty amazing people and do a few things only a handful of people can say they’ve done.
In elementary school, I was in the S.C.O.P.E. (Spotsylvania County Program of Enrichment) program, my county’s way of separating out students who they considered gifted and a distraction in the classroom. Every day, for at least two hours, a few of my classmates and I were pulled out of class with our regular teacher and went to a different room and studied things not in the regular curriculum. While our classmates that were left behind studied multiplication tables and took spelling tests on basic vocabulary, we dissected …show more content…
The one and only reason I applied was because all of my friends were applying. Everyone said that I would be lucky if I got in along with all my friends, who were definitely going to be accepted. Even I didn’t believe I would get in; I just wanted to have study hall with my friends in order to work on our CGS applications. There were multiple tests that we had to complete; writing, reading comprehension, and mathematics. We had interviews where we had to present three separate projects demonstrating our passion for education and research ability to a panel of judges. I later found out that out of all of my friends, I scored the highest on these placement tests. In fact, I was the fifth highest in the county. Over 200 applied and I scored fifth highest. This made me believe that I would be more than prepared for going into CGS, a program supposedly designed to help prepare gifted students for