I Thought Getting My GED Was Impossible

I went from being an honor roll student in middle school to being a flat out failure in high school. School just didn’t interest me and for a couple of years I went from barely showing up to school to dropping out completely with a 10th grade education. That was a real disappointment for my family. They always saw the potential in me that I didn’t see in myself. Without a high school diploma, I just moved from one dead end job to another for over a decade.

I wanted something more out of my life: more money, more interesting experiences, more challenges, and of course, a mark of some kind of achievement. A little something that I could be proud to have accomplished! In May of last year, my brother’s girlfriend told me that she was attending online college. With that, I knew that I could do it too! I immediately began to study for the GED, devouring any online and printed practice tests. My life, this past year, has been an educational whirlwind. I passed the GED test a year ago next month and am currently enrolled in online classes at my state university pursuing an MDS (Multi-Disciplinary Studies) degree with a 4.0 GPA.

Math, of course, was my biggest fear and to be honest, still is. However, I refused to let it beat me and keep me from achieving my goals. I did all the problems in the GED book and checked my answers. When they were right, great! When they were wrong, I just went back and redid the problems until I came to the understanding of how to get the right answer.

Quite frankly, after being out of school for seventeen years, getting my GED seemed like an impossible wall to scale. Last spring, I would have told you that I wanted more out of life but I was destined to be a loser, working dead end jobs until I was 65 or dead. However, after getting the GED, I realize that one is in control of one’s destiny as long as they are healthy and alive. Every single one of us doesn’t have to let our circumstances or even our limitations shape our futures. Even though we may be fearful or insecure, we can can move beyond that to achieve what we want. We can persevere through our struggles to come out the victor in the end.

Because I took the initiative to get my GED, my brother, who is not very academically inclined also decided to pursue his GED as well. Last week, he took the test and passed! There were times when he would become so frustrated with studying and he even had to take the pre-test several times before passing it. He would just dust himself off, take a deep breath, and get right back on the horse. As long as he was up for the challenge, he wasn’t ready to admit defeat and he wouldn’t give up the fight until he was the winner. Because of that attitude, he walks a little straighter, his eyes are a little brighter, and he dreams a lot bigger!