Personal Narrative: Connally High School

The summer between my sophomore year and junior year was a life changing period. For one, my mother and I moved to Waco, Texas, an 8-hour drive from my home of Weslaco. Along with this new address, I also had a new school. Naturally, I went to the school nearest my home, Connally High School. I didn’t know it on my first day of school, but Connally High School would become my 2nd out of 3 high schools I would attend. Connally High School was a whole different world from my previous high school. The most noticeable thing was the size. Connally has about 600 students in the whole school, while my previous sophomore class was 556 students, with 1000 in total in school. Also, Connally had a much more conservative feel: there was hardly any kind …show more content…
In the month of January, I found out my class rank: 33/113. When I first saw this figure, I immediately felt that it was a mistake. These numbers did not make sense. For one, in my previous school, I was ranked 12 out of 556 students. How could I have gone so low? I expected myself to be in the top 10% of my class because of my academic record of many PAP and AP classes. With my class rank in my mind, I made my way to my counselor’s office. I began by asking her why was my rank so low since I had a great academic progress and I had taken more PAP and AP classes than those around me. She responded by taking out a book that was entitled, “Connally ISD Student Handbook.” She read aloud to me the policy about transferring grades. In laymen speech, the policy stated that a transfer student’s grades come in all as regular credit. Meaning that all of my grades will be weighted on a GPA scale without a multiplier. For example, schools will give you a multiplier for taking a PAP class, this affects your class rank. All of my grades, that were AP and PAP, should’ve been given a multiplier like all of my peers around me. However, Connally’s policy said, “No, if you transferred here from another school, you get regular credit for all your classes, no matter if they were AP or PAP.” I was confounded to learn this. My counselor continued to explain to me that they had this policy to “protect” their students and give them …show more content…
By talking to my mom and friends, they all felt that I should do whatever is best for me. It was ultimately up to me whether or not I would leave Connally High School. Upon looking, I was stuck between two high schools in the Waco area. I decided to visit one of them, University High School. When I stepped into the building, I immediately felt that I was in my first high school again because of University’s size, a student body of over 1,000 students. Furthermore, my mother and I scheduled a meeting with the senior class counselor. In the meeting, I first asked the most important question; will my PAP and AP classes receive a multiplier? By my delight, she said, “Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t they?” With that yes, I decided that I would transfer to University High School my senior