Sarah Dickerson
My Educational Journey:
When I was younger, I did not enjoy school and it was difficult for me, except for recess. Recess was my favorite time of the school day because I had a break from learning, reading, and writing. Later my parents found out I have some learning disabilities and that is why I was struggling in school. I was given help for these disabilities, and I began to enjoy school more, but I still did not fully enjoy going to school for 8 hours every school day. After I graduated 8th grade and my parents decided to homeschool me for high school. This change was a good choice for me because I was able to learn at my own pace, and I was not as easily distracted. I also had more freedom in what I learned which allowed me to take some classes that interested me like photography, illustration, and animation. I was even able to take college classes through junior college during my sophomore year till my senior year so I could get both high school and college credits at the same time.
Halfway through my freshmen year of high school Covid hit and all my in-person classes were moved online. At first, this affected my learning because I was used to seeing the teacher in person and I was making eye contact with the teacher and classmates not through a computer screen. In California, Covid shutdowns lasted for over a year which means in my sophomore year all of my classes were online. Coming into my sophomore year as an online student was tough, but over the first semester, I was able to adjust to being an online student. When the Covid shutdowns passed and in-person, classes were available I decided to stay online because now I felt more comfortable with online classes and with online classes, you can do it from wherever you want as long as you have Wi-Fi. This gave my family and me the freedom to travel around and explore. We ended up going on some of the best trips I have ever been on while I was an online student. Some trips we did were a three-week ski trip through several states, traveling to Utah, Colorado, and Arizona and going national park hopping, and several trips to Tahoe and along the coast of California.
Pacific Sands Academy became a part of my educational journey a little bit into my junior year. Once I joined my high school educational journey became easier to manage and more interesting because I was able to choose which classes I wanted to do (within the classes I needed to graduate with) which made my high school experience more fun and exciting.
During my junior year, I decided I wanted to graduate early and focus on lacrosse so I could play on a college-level team. At first, I wanted to graduate a whole year early and spend the next year working on lacrosse, working, and taking a few community college classes. Everything was planned out on what I needed to do so I could graduate early, and I was ready to be done with high school when club lacrosse became a problem. Unlike most sports lacrosse runs on your high school graduation year (like 2023 and 2024) not your age (like 12U and 14U) so once I graduated, I could no longer play lacrosse. I wanted to play another year of club lacrosse so I could improve my skills. I decided would graduate halfway through my senior year. For the other half of my senior year I want to work, take a few community college classes, and train for college lacrosse.