Kathleen Paulich

 I have always been different. I was tasked at an early age to separate myself from the rest. I was different in elementary school because it felt like I was the only child in my room missing a dad. I wasn’t sure why everybody always had two parents coming in but I only had my mother. It was later on that this taught me to be independent just like my mom was. To be driven by all of the negative things surrounding me. When people tell you that you can’t you should prove to them that you can. Even if you fail your ability to try brings you halfway to your success. Like Michael Jordan once said “…..It is because I fail that I succeed.” Every failure is a learning experience and I have grown to succeed past everything I have failed from in the past.

In middle school I was different because I was the only girl on my schools football team. My school, coaches, and teachers didn’t think I would make it past tryouts. I proved to my coach that I wanted nothing more than to succeed for my team. I proved to him that I could play and started middle linebacker for the rest of the season.

There comes a time when we are all faced with a hard decision. In high school I was given the opportunity to leave my school to enroll in an honors school of excellence at the local community college. With this being said I would no longer have sports, a prom, an easy schedule or teachers that didn’t care if your homework wasn’t done. It was the big leagues, college professors, college classes, college workload. It was dreamlike to imagine myself at fifteen in a college classroom. I decided to take that opportunity and use it to my full advantage. From this decision I have gained back all of my losses and more.