High School has been one of the most important landmarks in my life. My name is Ahliyah Williams. I am a senior at Dr. Henry A. Wise Jr. High School in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. These special years of my life included my development as a person, challenging educational encounters, preparing for post-secondary options, and bettering myself for real-world situations. This essay will explain the journey of my high school experience as being a student-athlete. I have been at my most vulnerable times in high school. Equally important, I obtained my best memories throughout the four years of attending this school. In my high school career, I thankfully changed into the woman that I hope to be for the rest of my life.
It was on a Tuesday morning at 5:30 AM. I woke up early, made breakfast, and got ready. Never before have I made sure that I looked so presentable in my life. I felt unstoppable because I knew that I was a day closer to being in the real world. Little did I know that I had many obstacles to go through to develop me into the “adult” that I thought I had already become. Going through the doors, I didn’t know what to expect. Is high school like the movies? Would I get bullied? Knowing that high school was a totally different ball-game than what middle school was, I expected nothing but the worst.  I started high school as a shy freshman in a bright gold shirt. The shirts that we had to wear made me even more anxious to be seen by the huge crowds of upperclassman.

As sophomore year begin to approach, never had it felt better to get out of gold and go into the black uniforms. I truly begin to not care about the important things like school. All I wanted to do was have more friends and more fun. Even though it felt good to be a grade higher, there was still something missing. With me being the intelligent girl that I am, I began to slowly but surely make better decisions for myself. The sense of maturity that everyone is supposed to gain by age 16 came right on time. Eleventh grade was my hardest year by far. Never had I felt more lost in my life. The pressure from my parents, teachers, and even my coach started to rain on me. Anxiety from freshman year slowly emerged its way into my junior year. Reality began to strike on me like lightning with tests, quizzes, and exams. I realized I had to grow up fast in order to face the real world. One of the first steps that I had to take was getting over my immaturity and anxiety. I forced myself to overcome many things that I would never get myself into. Something as simple as going to the grocery store by myself or ordering food; is something that I now enjoy.
In my senior year, now I have become accustomed to the guidelines and rules that are expected from the senior class. Balancing school and sports can be stressful but has its benefits. I have gained the important skill to be able to multitask. This trait has given me advantages in the most beneficial ways. Multi-tasking is the key to the twenty-first century with all the technology used. I know now that the obstacles that were thrown my way have changed me for the best.

Turning in work on time has definitely been one of my most difficult educational experiences. I usually find it hard to keep up with the work that I have due.  This seems to be because of my bad organization skills. In eleventh grade, final grades were going in. Unfortunately, because of my work patterns, some assignments wouldn’t be turned in when it was supposed to. Because of that small mistake, my grades could have been much different. The lack of organization made it often hard for even my teachers to put my grades in when they were supposed to. Unfortunately, this has affected many of my grades throughout my high school career. In college, professors will not accept late work most of the time. This is because with becoming older, should come responsibility. I accept the challenge of improving this problem. I am working on improving my organization skills by using folders and dividers in my notebook. Another thing that has greatly challenged me in school was AP Government class. I decided to take an Advanced Placement class because I figured that it would make me more studious and ready for college. In my regret, the class did the opposite. Since I was not applying myself like I should have, I got bad grades. My grade in AP class suffered more than any of my other grades.. Consequently, taking a class that was supposed to benefit me the most, affected me for the worst.

Lastly, studying is something that I will always have a difficult time doing. As I mature I realize that studying is a necessity that I should get used to before I go to college. College has been one of the biggest influences toward me studying more. I notice that studying helps me a lot when I do it. Whenever there is something important that I have to study for, I always try my best to be able to motivate myself to review it. Since the subject math is something that I find difficult to understand sometimes, it often has helped me out a lot to study my classwork and homework. Furthermore, as I increase my studying habits, I have done better on many assignments. Over the course of my educational years, I take studying more serious than ever before.

I always have known what I wanted to do in life. From age three, I had it all figured out that I wanted to be a Veterinarian. As I got older, I was always proud of telling people that is what I wanted to be. While everyone wanted to be a hairdresser or a photographer, I wanted to be a doctor. Entering high school definitely changed my perspective on my career choice. I often questioned myself because I didn’t want to change what I always wanted to do for my whole life. Also, it was getting down to the wire with time.
I was in my eleventh grade year when I suddenly chose something different to do with my life. It was very stressful. After researching careers, and being in classes like College Summit, it was soon realized that  becoming a Veterinarian wasn’t the right career choice for me. It was not only because my interest changed, but because of things like the salary. I have very high expectations for myself. I realized that even with the strenuous years that high-paid jobs have to endure, that is what I have to sacrifice in order to be happy. After I realized what I wanted to do, I turned to colleges that would be the best option for my career field. I began researching universities that had the best medical fields. Since then, I have been doing everything I can do to meet the requirements for colleges.

With being a sports medicine doctor, it is required to first get a bachelor’s degree and then a doctorate. I knew that I wanted to start to get good grades early because in medical school I will need to get exceptional grades. Thankfully I have gained the knowledge early that if I wanted to have a nice living, I needed to put the work in. My grades begin to raise the more focused I became. Taking my work more seriously was something that I had to put before anything. I cut more excuses and began to earn honor roll every quarter. Now since my grades have improved tremendously, it is easier for me to freely choose many colleges without worrying. When i got my mind right, I became unstoppable. Now in senior year, I plan to get my best grades by far.

Helping people has always been something I have been interested in. Service hours are an important aspect of my high-school experience. I did not expect that when I attempted to get a couple service hours by giving cans of perishable food to the hungry, I would have wanted to become more involved in helping people. After donating food to people who needed it the most, I searched the web for more opportunities to help people who are struggling. Central Union Mission and National Coalition For The Homeless are two organizations that I have donated to. Even though I was not earning service hours, I was earning a lifetime of memories from random people who showed me, love. This experience has helped me to be able to contribute to the world. I am thankful that I have been able to make a change.

Early in my high school career, I felt bullied and intimidated in some ways. Those experiences had some negative effects, but ultimately the effects became positive. At one point, I started to do somewhat the same to someone else, and that made me feel even worse. Those bad feelings have given me a stronger sense of empathy and compassion than I never knew was within me. Not only do I affect many people in great ways now, but I have people who look up to me. My siblings, cousins, and younger teammates are people who I know admire what I do. I consider myself to be a big role model for many people. Now I do everything to my best ability so that the people who I love can follow my steps. I also want people to remember all the great things I did for them. This responsibility of being a leader will help me be able to mentor and cultivate different people’s growth and maturity.

This situation is relevant because a good citizen is naturally a good person. A good person knows right from wrong and does the right thing at the right time. If there is an accident on the road,  I would pull over and call the police. If I see a stop sign and no one else is on the street, I stop anyway. Good citizens do the right thing even when no one is watching. I have gained integrity from being a good leader and responsible citizen. My high school years included my development as a person, challenging educational encounters, preparing for post-secondary options, and bettering myself for real-world situations. I know a year from now I will be appreciating these special times of my life. In less than one hundred days, I will officially be a college student. I couldn’t say that I am not nervous, but I know that it will be an experience of a lifetime
   
   

                           How Dogs Process Human Words

Humans are introduced to rudimentary neural representations at a young age in order to possess basic abilities to thrive in this world of communication, but when scientists conduct a study on dogs to see if they understand the human language, the outcome can be surprising to some. When you are playing with your dog outside and say, “go fetch!”, is your dog reacting because it knows you are saying an action or reacting because they can interpret the meaning of your words? This theory was tested by studies to discover just how closely dogs can understand commonly used human words. There are different levels of the abilities that dogs possess in order to process words.  When intrigued in researching articles about how animals, specifically dogs, can react when hearing the human language, I found my tertiary source article named, “How Do Dogs Process Words”. This provided all the necessary information to give me a general idea of the way dogs are processing words. The article source, Awake FMRI/ phMRI became my secondary source article which talked of the medical tools used to test exactly what goes through a dog’s brain when processing what humans are saying. This article finally linked me to my primary source, The Frontiers in Neuroscience article, “Awake FMRI Reveals Brain Regions for Novel Word Detection in Dogs” that consisted of facts which explained the specific process of how it was found that dogs are surely able to indicate human words to support this scientific study. I was able to compare and contrast how all of my articles gave me a better understanding of each other. I did so by going as far as three articles from the first one that I found to get the information that I wanted. The tertiary article was broken down in the secondary source in order to help my difficulty in understanding my primary source.   

How do dogs process words by Eleanor Imster was the first source that I came across when becoming intrigued in finding information about the process in which animals take to translate words. Approaching this article with ignorance is not the best option because it has little to no detail or evidence. Therefore, if believing in this article you would only have a basic level of understanding. This article became my tertiary article because of the minimal facts that’s it consisted of. One of the reasons why this article was exceptionally difficult in being supportive because the words used were very simple and unadvanced in comparison to my primary article. For example, in this tertiary article it was said, “The researchers hypothesize that the dogs may show greater neural activation to a new, unknown word because they sense their owners want them to understand what they are saying, and they are trying to do so”(Eleanor Imster, How do dogs process words?). That in comparison to Frontiers in Neuroscience saying, “The neural regions responsible for target detection and novelty processing not only include primary sensory areas associated with the stimulus modality, but also recruit broader areas such as the posterior cingulate, inferior and middle frontal gyri, superior and middle temporal gyri, amygdala, thalamus, and lateral occipital cortex”(Linden et al., 1999; Kiehl et al., 2001; Brazdil et al., 2005; Goldman et  al., 2009; Cacciaglia et al., 2015). This shows the obvious difference between the two articles and what kind of detail that they both will provide. In the tertiary article it is more simplified than the primary article.  

When finding my first article, which was not the original source, I noticed that it was underdeveloped and limited with details. It is underdeveloped for the reason that it says things like, “Dogs may show greater neural activation to a new, unknown word because they sense their owners want them to understand what they are saying, and they are trying to do so”( Gregory Berns, The Dog Project, 2012). I found myself attempting to find a link to another source in order to gain more information about the study. This writing became easily the most significant to help me to connect my other two articles. Published by Frontiers in Neuroscience on 15 October 2018, the article “Awake FMRI Reveals Brain Regions for Novel Word Detection in Dogs”, became my primary article. This reading depicted a clear reasoning for the theory that dogs can understand human words. This was my most informative and factual article. Medical studies were used with lexis in order to provide scientific evidence. Searchlight multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) revealed that a subset of dogs had clusters of informative voxels that discriminated between words( Frontiers in Neuroscience.  “Awake FMRI Reveals Brain Regions for Novel Word Detection in Dogs”,  by Paul E. Phillips, 1st para). The question is if dogs are understanding what you say or understanding the cue for the command((Fukuzawa et al., 2005; Mills, 2015; Müller et al., 2015; Persson et al., 2015; D’Aniello et al., 2016). This article as my primary article had the most information translated in a technical way. It solemnly became my most important source. I found it necessary that I found other resources from my first essay to provide me lexis. One of those sources was the “Awake fMRI/  phMRI”. This became my secondary source. It was the key to translating the meanings of many of the terms used in my other two sources. This source had medical terms that gave understanding to the difficult to read terms in the other two articles. With this key- like source I was able to adjust to the reading more efficiently. I also was able to approach the main point that the writer was attempting to get across in an easier way. This overall helped me to connect my articles in order to write a better essay.  

In conclusion, I was able to compare and contrast how all of my articles gave me a better understanding of each other. In this essay I wanted to get the point across that it is important to trace back as far as you can in order to get the necessary information that is needed. It is important to not go for the immediate source that you find because that source usually has botched information provided by the original, more scientific

source. Many writings may not accommodate a reader, but it is recommended to learn how to accommodate the reading by finding other supporting articles.   

African-Americans who consider themselves Christians are basically slaves controlled by the laws of religion. Since slavery, Black people have become more involved with Christianity than ever. Christianity has been one of the many religions that I have questioned because of the many contradictions that are within it. Never have I had a strong stance on the topic or have I truly had faith in the biggest controversy in the world, religion. More specifically, Christianity is believed by many Black people in America.  As for my family, we are believers in a higher power, but Christianity is not strongly believed in my household. African- American people have put their faith in this religion more than any other culture. This is a phenomenon that should be discussed more than anything.

  The Bible is a book with “sacred texts”. It contains records which explains the relationship between God and humans. The Bible explains everything that Christians believe in. In my opinion, the Bible is nothing but a book full of contradictions. The verse, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God”( Ephesians 2:8-9) is completely contradicted by the verse, “Ye see then now that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only “ (James 2:24). These two verses contradict themselves. In the words of Ephesians, you are saved by faith in God only, but in the words of James you are not saved by faith only. There are many verses like-so that strongly go against one another. Christians seem to make Christianity seem as if it has no bad, it is perfect, and it will make someone perfect. in reality, many things in the Bible are nothing but evil sayings and wrongful doings. It is shocking how Christians could still try to justify things that cannot be justified in the Bible, by using the saying “God works in mysterious ways“.

  Furthermore, society is one of the main factors that have influenced the Christian based beliefs in African- American culture. Society has achieved in installing “God’s promise”, which will set someone free from all their pain and misery. Society is still able to make Black people believe the modern-day resurrection. There is no reason that I would ever believe in a book that nobody knows who wrote for sure, to save me from my “sins”. Slaves had nothing to keep their hopes up, until the Bible and Christianity were introduced. This religion taught blacks that they are doing everything for reason, and a good reason. This was great for the slave owners because they got harder workers. Even in the modern era, all the crime that is taking place today, people want to attempt to believe in the Bible that promises forgiveness. Christianity in my opinion, was a scam back then to control slaves even more than they already were. I choose to not allow myself to get participate in something that will control every aspect of my life.

In conclusion, religion is something that was not embedded in me as a young child to follow by. Christianity is nothing but a scam it was a scam during slavery, and even more now. Christianity is believed by more than half of African-Americans. This shows the same mental controls that we have been under for years, and how we are somewhat still the ignorant slaves that are still easily controlled. The Bible may have been said to have the sacred text and wisdom of the Almighty God, but it does nothing but contradict itself. Lastly, society has had major impacts on our religious beliefs. Society has made it “known” to all mankind that there is a God, who will rescue all, as long as they follow the rules in the book. The book, which is the Bible seems to be is comparable to the rules and the common regulations of the world, this is not a coincidence.

In summary, although Christianity seems to be a huge scam to especially African-Americans, it is something that may actually keep a lot of citizens in society on a holy and good path. This is especially beneficial to the world as we know it. It also may actually give the world an imagination to build on than what they physically see. If believed, salvation is a free gift, unlike many gifts that are not free.

Literacy is a powerful thing in the world that is necessary for almost every human being.  

The ability to read and write is influenced by many things in someone’s life. The key to literacy is reading development and a progression in skills. The key to my literacy improvement was an influence of many things over the course of my life that made me truly consider how I interpret my own literacy. These are the reasons why I read and write the way I do. Throughout my lifetime, I’ve had experienced many things that have helped me to realize the power of language.   

English is my favorite subject. My mother had a strong belief in proper English. Those beliefs influenced the way I read and write. My favorite kind of writing is biographies. I enjoy seeing and understanding things from someone else’s point of view. This has influenced my writing by allowing me to understand different thought processes. It helps me to think outside the box when reading, and even writing. My parents allowed me to read and watch a lot of things that interested me. Those things included many scary movies. For some odd reason, I loved watching zombie and paranormal movies. Those movies had an impact on my writing. Being able to watch scary movies as a young child showed in my writing. It didn’t turn me into a crazy person, it made my writing more creative. For example, after watching a movie such as Snakes on a Plane, I would free write about snakes that ate people and terrorized a plane. I would go in such detail because of watching a movie with so much gore and rawness.   

I was read to a lot as a kid, which was another impact on my reading and writing. I remember my mother would always read to me as a child. She specifically read children’s books that had a meaning to them. After reading the book, we would have a discussion about the message of the books that we read together. This did not stop me from “having a normal childhood”, rather I enjoyed it a lot. It allowed me to tell my mom what opinion about what I’m taking in from the books. In kindergarten my teacher read to the class every day. Hearing her distinct voice, helped me every time to pay attention to what she read from the books. The books had many

illustrations, fun rhymes, and wacky sounds. Hearing my teacher ask the class to sound out words like “potato”, always gave me happiness from having to challenge myself, even at such a young age. I have a vivid memory of being in kindergarten and reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Where the Wild Things Are, The Rainbow Fish, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do

You See? The Rainbow Fish, by Marcus Pfister, allowed me to be interactive and engage with the bright colors of the fish. My teacher would make funny sounds for a different character. This helped me memorize the role and what the characters meant in the book. When I write now, I use a similar technique of labeling each key point of what I want to discuss with different attention grabbers. Even something as simple as highlighting important things with different colors is a great technique for when I’m trying to take notes for a paper or write a research paper on a specific topic. That book still resonates with me today because it’s enjoyable when reading things that can catch the reader’s attention.

The next thing that influenced my writing was that  moving to different places quite a lot. I never got a base of a set way of writing because I moved around to different schools and neighborhoods. Therefore, with writing, I don’t have a basic technique that I use, which slightly affects me in Writing and Rhetoric class. Never have I had a class specific to Writing and Rhetoric in high school. Not experiencing that class set me back behind my peers. In my experience of changing schools so often, my writing always changed because I was taught different techniques by different teachers. When I was a child I always enjoyed writing and grammar, but I was not prepared by my school for college-level writing. I would say that my school had a big influence on my preparedness for college-level writing. The school reputation was not known for having the most skillful teachers that would get the kids to a higher way of thinking. Taking Honors English in high school never challenged me the way it should have. Even on my tests, including SAT, I got an above average score, I still felt like I wasn’t on the level I should’ve been. I found my stepfather teaching me the proper grammar and how to properly write papers, even after having an Honors English class.  After having those non-challenging classes, my writing abilities began to show through my assignments. My stepfather, who is very good with writing, helped me to become nearly the best writer that I could be. Much of my writing skills come from a mixture of my mother’s ability in proper grammar and my stepfathers’ abilities in the skills of wording and formatting. Those high school experiences helped me to realize truly where I stood with my writing.

In my opinion, Literacy is not just the ability to read or write, but the ability to take lemons and make lemonade. My childhood, film, parents, and high school were all different factors for the way that I write to this day. Some of these experiences are good, some bad, but they all have changed me for the better. Not only has literacy helped me in school, but it has helped me to express myself based off experiences mainly from my childhood.  

                                                                  Work Cited

                      (Wikipedia), (Google Books), (Hobby Lark, Rowland, May 11,2016)

Why VMI?
  Growing up I’ve always dreamt of going to a prestigious school and becoming successful. There is no doubt in my mind that I have fulfilled my dream. While making my college decision, I looked at every school I was accepted to and said, “What makes these schools different than the other ones”. There were very few if any at all that stood out. The one that I could honestly say did, was Virginia Military Institute. It was the only Military Institute that I had been accepted to, so that may be one of the reasons it was different than the rest. The second major difference that I noticed with VMI is the strong support system within the staff. I can truly say that I will be part of the VMI family wherever I go. When I attended Indoor New Balance Nationals. Multiple VMI alumni, including other signees, introduced themselves to me and my mother, because of the gear that we had on. That truly made me realize “Why VMI?”.

    Now that I have answered the question of why I chose VMI, let me say, “Why Me?”. The senior quote I chose for yearbook says, “If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you”. Not only does this quote fit perfectly with VMI, but it describes my life. Throughout my senior year, I made it a mission to challenge myself until I see a change. I have thankfully succeeded with that goal. This year I have earned the best grades that I have ever had and became an amazing athlete in the process. Not only is it obvious by the progression of my academic and athletic skills, but it is present with my aura. Recently I received the Distinguished Athlete For United States Marines Award. I take pride in that award because I earned it by being humble, a leader, and having determination. I plan to make the most out of the opportunity I was given from this institute. VMI is where people prosper and success stories are made, and where I plan to spend my next four years.

Sincerely,

Ahliyah Williams