David Wilhite

Ever since early grade school, my parents have persistently pushed me to get good grades, to get into a good school and degree. During grade school I graduated within the top of my class, middle school I graduated with a 3.9 GPA and received a "high achiever" award, but when I got to my freshman year of high school I performed very low and finished the year with a high 2.0-2.8 GPA. This was definitely very low to what I was used to. I pushed off work and focused on other interests such as videogames and sports while my schoolwork was on the backburner. However, when the following year rolled around I began to do better in school and was turning my grade around after the first semester, but that's when COVID hit. It forced everyone online including myself, for the remainder of my high school years I was online. Now that was not easy, I thought it would be but I'm traditionally not good at math, especially when I can't see the use for it in the "real-world", so much of the math that I was supposed to learn throughout that time period is either non-existent in my head or it was never there. Essentially my grades improved a little, not by a whole lot, but I didn't have much hope since I as very afraid of my grades hindering my ability to get into college. Especially after I received my SAT scores which I believe were basically right on the average students performance of 9.60-80. On a better note, during my senior year of high school, I was just sick and tired of online and going to my school in-person, so I took up courses at Front Range Community College to learn about topics that interested me and suit my career path, while also high school and college credit all while at the reduced price due to me still being enrolled in high school. I took classes like Colorado Wildlife, Algebra, Forestry, and a branch of the forestry class (which counted as it's own individual course and credit) which had us fly out to Alaska for a week or so of learning and adventuring. It was without a doubt the best trip I had ever done, even though it was a school trip and I had doubts about those in the past, it really helped solidify my interests and general career path I wish to pursue. Once summer came to an end, my brother and I had applied for one college, Western Colorado University. Primarily because of its relatively remote location in the small town of Gunnison, the excellent skiing at Mt. Crested, awesome outdoor activities, and a slue of other outdoor activities nearby. Not to mention, the beautiful campus and smaller classes which helped for the student to teacher relationship which I see as a major benefit as opposed to the traditional large auditorium and lecture hall form of learning. Now, I just finished up our freshman year, with a 3.78 GPA and have never felt better. Looking back, I never really enjoyed school nor hated it, bit I never saw the benefit out of it other than we are learning about new ideas. However, when I had the ability to finally enroll in some courses from the community college during my senior year of high school, school finally became fun. I was able to learn about stuff that interested me, that wanted me to keep learning, mainly because It revolved around my interests and I could see how it may be useful in my life. I'd say that played a major role in my performance for my finishing my first year of college the way that I did, having the ability to learn about stuff that interests you and you can see it's real world implication and importance can greatly benefit a students ability to learn and career choice down the road: and I think my experience is a proficient example of that.