Describe your outstanding achievement in detail and provide the specific planning, training, goals, and steps taken to make the accomplishment successful. Include details about your role and highlight leadership you provided. If applicable, describe how your achievement provided knowledge and education related to a specific health, safety, environmental or financial risk.
My name is Kimberly Aspedon and I WILL graduate June 2013. My biggest achievement is not giving up planning and setting goals for my future. Through my four academic years I moved five times. The first semester of ninth grade year I was home-schooled. We lived in a two story house before we rented it out. My father, two siblings and I moved in with my grandparents while my mother moved to Florida where she received a job. There were three teenagers and three adults living in a two bedroom/one bath house. We only saw my mother once maybe twice a month when she came up to South Carolina. During this time I was placed back into public school and had my credits denied me due to scheduling. I was told I was going to graduate one/two years late when I first got back to public school. Nine weeks in to the second semester; April 1st, 2010, we moved to Lakeland, Florida and joined my mom. After long battles with the administration at the new school, I still ended up in Physical Education classes for the rest of the school year and left with no hope. I had to retake all the classes, who’s credit was ripped from me, online through Florida Virtual School during the summer on my own time. After long nights of sitting in front of the computer for hours I finally regained all those credits. About a year later, April 1st, 2011, we moved for the fifth time to Land O'Lakes, Florida where I attend Sunlake High School. I had more complications once I arrived with all my credits being lost in the system, but after a lot of hard searching we found all of my credits and I was back on track. Through all of this I never heard of Advance Placement classes or Dual Enrollment classes. Now I am a senior in high school; GRADUATING June 1, 2013, and I am a full time dual enrollment student. I also work two jobs and attend high school along with dual enrollment. Instead of graduating with only twenty-four credits, like most people, I WILL BE graduating with over thirty credits and have one whole year of college out of the way. It has been very rough and there were times I wanted to give up and just drop out of school. There were nights and there are still nights I cry and feel like giving up because I do not think I am doing good enough. My parents, administration, teachers, and professors all tell me I am doing a fantastic job. I am head-strong, it is hard to believe them. However while writing this I realized, “yes I am not valedictorian or salutatorian but through everything I went through, I did marvelous things!” You may be reading this and thinking this is about academics but in reality it is much bigger then that. It is about a fourteen/fifteen year old girl with the weight of the world on her shoulders having the choice to either: A) give up and drop out, B) graduate late, or C) persevere and prove everyone wrong. I over came all the challenges the different school systems threw at me and I proved to not only to myself but everyone else I will achieve all things. I could not have over come all of these hardships with out the help of my family, boyfriend, teachers and administration but most importantly I could not have done this without the strength the Lord Jesus Christ gave me.
What challenges or obstacles did you face? How did you meet those challenges?
I had all of my credits taken from me and was told I was going to graduate a year or two late. However I learned of this website where I could take the classes and still get all my credits back. I took all of my classes again and regained my credits. I even took more then I had to and got ahead. Living in a camper is also a challenge because there is no room to spread all your books and study like you should be able to. It can be very stressful at times because with such small living quarters it is easy to get distracted from your studies. However I mange to make do, put my head phones and listen to my music while I study the best I can. Also working two jobs while going to school presents a challenge because it can become difficult to keep up with your grades and homework. However I do have a job where if we are not busy we can work on school and that is how I can accomplish that challenge. I overcame adversity and overcame the negative thoughts that were first placed in my head.
What impact did your achievement have on you personally? What impact, if any, did your achievement have on your family? Your school? Your community? If applicable, describe how your achievement changed the behavior of its beneficiaries, specific to reducing health, safety, environmental or financial risk.
This achievement impacted me in more ways then one but the biggest impact it had on me was that I overcame all the negative thoughts thrown my way. I was able to live in small confinements and still succeed and be able to gain every credit back and gain more then what I am suppose to have. But I think that the greatest achievement out of all of this is that my two siblings can see that no matter what life might throw at them later that any and everything is possible if they set their minds to it and work hard. Hard work, determination, faith and prayer can help a blind man see. Out of all things I think the impact it has on the younger ones around me is more important than anything. Trying is the most important thing in life if you do not try then you will never know what you could have achieved. I believe through everything I showed that and I can tell that to everyone, younger and older.
